[ale] HTML Mail (was: Re: ink expired?!?!?)

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Fri, 2007-01-12 at 16:30 -0500, Jim Popovitch wrote:

> Perhaps it wasn't the mfgs attempt to screw their customers, but rather
> an effort to reduce support costs involved with folks who only printed a
> few pages here and there, then 2 years later complained that ink from
> their original ink cartridge had dried and clogged the printer head.  I
> would bet that if you read up on ink cartridges there is probably some
> notes on recommended usable life span, after all they do come in some
> pretty environmentally protected packaging and probably can sit around
> open for decades.
> 
> BTW, What is up with all the HTML emails these days?


That is probably a good question.  There is a great deal of argument
both for and against HTML mails, and I wouldn't use it at all if
Evolution was bad at building the text/plain message component when
sending messages that are text/html.

That having been said, I am using it because it is easier to use one
style for writing mail rather than two.  My school forums and e-mail
require the usage of HTML mail.  Now, while I don't agree with the way
that everyone uses HTML mail, I can see that there are merits to using
it, and every day that goes by, bandwidth becomes less and less
expensive.  I used to be opposed to HTML mail because of its more than
doubling the size of a message, because at that time, most people
joining the Internet were using messages without MIME and thus using
text/plain for their mail.  Then again, that was also a time with ASCII
and the various ISO-8859 encodings were the end-all, be-all, and more
often than not it was plain ASCII.

Today, though, I don't see much of a reason to not use HTML mail, at
least if one isn't using a brain-dead client to compose it.  Evolution
at least attaches a text/plain section that uses the standard old
formatting rules for text messages to create the effects of bold and
italic and underline for people who prefer to read the text/plain
section of the e-mail, as I recall.  HTML has become something of a
standard itself with more than just the World Wide Web, as well; it is
used in instant messaging clients and in the mail clients that the
majority of the world uses.  Before I started with school and had a
strict requirement to use HTML messages there, I also found that people
seemed to respond better to HTML messages.  Probably because they can
be, when used properly, more readable than their text/plain
counterparts.

Also, I tend to use UTF-8 in messages, because I like to take advantage
of the typographical and mathematical characters that exist in Unicode.
I do recall being asked to avoid non-ASCII UTF-8 on this mailing list,
though, and so I attempt to refrain from using it when I am writing a
message here.  (The characters I usually use are the open- and
close-quotation marks, both single and double, the ellipsis, the em
dash, and arrows (like ? for explaining menu options).  Since UTF-8 is
the default encoding on most of the Web (rather, most of the web that I
use), and GNOME makes it easy to use UTF-8, so I use it.

In the end, to each their own, at least to me.  I certainly have
annoyances about the way some people use HTML mail, but I don't find it
annoying within itself.  Those who want to use text/plain, of course,
can read the text/plain segments of my messages.  After all, that's why
they are there.  :-)  There are plenty of arguments that can be given
for using both.  I think that the world is moving to HTML and UTF-8, in
the long run, and I figure that I might as well just use it everywhere
so that I can use my client uniformly wherever I post.

    -- Mike

--
Michael B. Trausch
                    fd0man at gmail.com
Phone: (404) 592-5746
                          Jabber IM:
                    fd0man at gmail.com
              fd0man at livejournal.com
Demand Freedom!  Use open and free protocols, standards, and software!
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