[ubuntu-uk] HTML Mail

[Peter Lewis]

On Friday 13 July 2007 at 13:50:20 Kirrus wrote:
> I use html emails all the time: Our customers request headers, and emails
> that have a bit more style than just text on a page. If I want to eat, then
> we provide what the customer wants, not what we'd prefer to do. There is
> only so far, and on certain topics, you can push people. Getting them to
> switch to Ubuntu was an accomplishment in itself...

Cool :-)

But no, I'm not advocating the banning of HTML emails in any circumstances. I 
just don't think it should really become the norm, especially for mailing 
lists. I request that people send me plain text. It's all about choice, I 
suppose, but providing both doesn't really cut it with me.

> > > It is not a unwanted feature, as it ensures that each individual
> > > receives the email in the correct format.
> >
> > What about if I want it in spoken voice, encoded as an Ogg/Vorbis
> > file? Can I
> > have it in "the correct format" for me too? How about if I want it
> > reworded in iambic pentameter?
>
> I'll leave the standards generation and reprogramming to you, but if you
> want it, go right ahead ;)

Ha ha, you've tempted me to think about it now... 

But the serious point is that I can't really expect the sender to have to 
account for all this.

> > > TBH, the amount of bandwidth consumed through the
> > > feature is negligible, especially compared to the bandwidth a single
> >
> > video
> >
> > > takes.
> >
> > True, but I don't tend to download videos via GPRS.
>
> True. A normal email is about 5-10Kb, including dual-encoding.
> 5KB being a pain if you're on 7KB/s  GPRS: yes. Unusable: no.

Speed wise, it's not an issue. But if over the course of a month I use 4 MB of 
GPRS for emails, if everyone sends every email twice, then I have to pay for 
8MB of bandwidth :-(

In summary, I'd rather people didn't send me HTML mails, as I like to format 
things to my taste on my own screen. But, I think it's far worse to send 
everything twice.

Pete.