Formatted vs. plain text mail (was: Call for testing the new dist-upgrade process)

[Jan Claeys]

Op di, 14-03-2006 te 08:06 -0500, schreef Jeff Bailey:
> And some of us who have done it quite intentionally because it's
> sometimes useful to be able to annotate mail with something other than
> plain text.

Which is useful in about 0.01% of all mails, in which case it's probably
easier to just put your document online on a webserver (or attach it to
the mail).

> Modern clients all provide a text/html component, and the ones I've
> played with in depth (mutt and evolution) each provide an option to
> show the text/plain when presented with an alternative.  I check
> occasionally to make sure that the text/plain component that is sent
> provides a good text/plain mapping.

There is also webmail, where you often have no choice, but where using
html view is a real privacy & security issue...

Also, the mail archives of the ubuntu lists don't show attachments,
which means all HTML messages are not available there.  See your message
I'm answering to now:
<https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/sounder/2006-March/004797.html>

> Our list policy asks folks to 'avoid' HTML, so I do not use
> annotations when I'm mailing to Ubuntu lists.  However, my emails
> still tend to have a text/html component.  I can see "Either provide
> the body of the email in text/plain or ensure that there is a complete
> and useful text/plain component." covering most needs. 

Technically that means you send a message that has 2 attachments(!) with
an indication that they are 2 representations of the same "data".  See
at the archives above what that does to many programs (mailing list
recipients aren't only mail clients for use by humans).


-- 
Jan Claeys