Formatted vs. plain text mail

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 13 March 2006 22:26, Ed Fletcher wrote:
> Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > Solution: set up Mailman to auto-generate a mail containing the
> > list rules to the sender *every*time* they send HTML mail. First
> > sentence is a nice polite "You have sent HTML-formatted mail to a
> > mailing list where the other members would rather you didn't."
> > Include the instructions for getting Outlook to send plain text
> > to specific addresses. Reply-To is set to a dev/null address.
> > Send an HTML mail = receive a please-don't-do-this *every*time*.
> > Sooner or later it sinks in.
> >
> > Benefits: The rest of us don't have to explain why it's not
> > appreciated. Flame war potential is reduced. The hassle and
> > irritation moves from the list members onto the HTML originator,
> > where it belongs.
>
> Is it possible to go a step further and have the html converted to
> plain text before it is sent to the list?  The only downside I can
> think of would be for e-mails with a gpg signature.  But maybe gpg
> sigs and html are a rare combination.

It's worth a try. But my gut feel tells me that the HTML-poster 
probably won't notice that their posts are now in text format. I 
don't have evidence, so we'd have to try it and see the results.

sigs are best left intact though. Most folk who take the effort to 
verify who they are won't appreciate that being undone :-)

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five