CodeWeaver Crossover Linux

Bo Grimes boslists at gmail.com
Tue Nov 4 16:50:25 UTC 2008


On Tue, Nov 04, 2008 at 08:10:32AM -0800, Pastor JW wrote:
> On Monday 03 November 2008 3:47:48 pm Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > 2008/11/4 Senectus . <senectus at gmail.com>:
> > > Why would you presume the right to request that?
> >
> > HTML posting is discouraged (or forbidden) in every Linux mailing list
> > that I subscribe to. Please, lets not turn this into a flame war.
> 
> It is quite universal on maillists of substance.  Besides which my mail client 
> filters all html message to trash.  In nearly 30 years now I have yet to come 
> across an html message with something of value in it. 

Of course not...they get filtered to trash.

> I really have no time to waste and even if I did, I'd not waste it looking
> at fluff stuffed messages.  The use for html is in creating websites, not
> sending notes.

This address is specifically for mailing list.  I get no html messages here. 
I have another for HTML, stuff like emails from "The Washington Post,"
"Politico" and "The Writer's Almanac."

I read this list with Mutt and the other with Thunderbird, which renders
html formatted mail just fine, and I find much worth in those web pages sent
as email.  It's much easier for me to have them sitting in my inbox ready to
read with my morning coffee than it is to go seek out the material from a
dozen places each morning.

I have a thrid account for family and friends.  As I am the only Linux user
in my family, and they all use Outlook despite my years of discouragement, I
find quite a lot of value in reading their emails to me (even if they are
formatted in html), and I value communication with them far above any piece
of software.

I agree this and other mailing lists of this sort are no more the place for
html than usenet, but the value in an email is in its content, not its
formatting. 

If the formatting prevents one from viewing the content, then you've got a
problem, but I structure my accounts so that I am able to communicate with
the people I value and get the information I value regardless of the
formatting.

Everything else we read from books to web pages to magazines to catalogs to
comic books to bills allows for special formatting and rich text.  When
bandwidth was expensive and modems slow and connects cost per minute, plain
text was essential.  

Now it's less so, and while people who use html on usenet or mailing lists
might be rude or uninformed they are not evil and stupid with nothing of   
value to say.

One's choice of email formatting is not a moral category.  It's more like if
you visit someone's home and they take their shoes off at the door you do
also.  If the list discourages or bans HTML messages, you don't send them.

As this is a highly flame-able topic and off-topic this will be my only
comment on the subject. 




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