Re: html email

[Ethan Tira-Thompson <ejt at andrew dot cmu dot edu>]

Resending as per Mike's PPIOSPE (not sure why the 'reply' to you went  
private, unless your original mail was private to me?  In which case  
PPIOSPE back-atcha :)

---------------------------

> I'm not sure silently stripping the HTML part is the right idea.  
> The point is to stop people that don't know what they're doing (and  
> thus don't understand why HTML is EVIL EVIL EVIL)
That's a matter of opinion.  And if you don't like HTML or consider  
it a security problem, just set your mail reader to ignore it and  
display the plain text, and those of us who want to see the full  
content of the message can see the HTML.  It's not that big a deal,  
I'm surprised to see so much religious zealotry here.

All of those links you provide are arguments against HTML-only  
email.  I agree that's a bad idea.  But when most mail programs send  
both plain text and HTML, the arguments are moot.  As long as the  
plain text version is there, what's the big deal?

For instance, you're right that it's non-homogenous.  But take that  
to its conclusion: some people want to use lynx to view the web,  
that's fine and there are ways to give them a usable experience (e.g.  
'alt' tags for images), but non-homogeneity isn't a good enough  
reason to deny the rest of us the full web page just because some  
people want to live in their console.  There's no progress in  
technology if everyone is held to the same lowest common denominator.

There's a well defined way to support both plain text and rich text  
in email.  I don't see why the plain text crowd has to say the rich  
text crowd can't coexist when there's a viable way to support both.

> If you plan to highlight your example code (and by what standard?),  
> you have too much time on your hands.
Standard?  Keywords are blue, comments are red, that kind of thing  
needs a standard?
In any case, when I copy and paste code from my editor, it can retain  
the syntax coloring.  It's very straightforward.  But even so, piping  
it through enscript isn't difficult either if I was on a lesser  
platform.

-ethan