Re: Email Format Poll for the list

[Chris Travers <..hidden..>]

Just a couple things to keep in mind though:

We can expect many newbies on this list (particularly the -users list)
and many may not yet appreciate the value of text-only email.

While I certainly prefer text-only, I think it is worth being fairly
forgiving on this list.  One thing I would note is that while I do
often try to read html messages, I long text lines are harder on the
eyes and it's more likely that I will miss something if I am in a
hurry.  Of course many email clients suck and we have to expect that
as a problem too....

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 5:15 PM, David Godfrey <..hidden..> wrote:
>
> Ok So I am a day late,
> I said I would get this sent on Friday, and plumb forgot!
>
> The results on the poll were surprising considering the amount of HTML mail seen
> on the list.
> They were also disappointing, out of the entire subscriber base, there we only
> 16 responses.
>
> 2  Don't Care
> 2  Multi Part is fine
> 12 Prefer Text only
>
> In some cases multipart or HTML won't be read or have increased likelyhood of
> being scored as spam.
>
> I will respond to Strollers excellent comments in a separate email.
> Thank you to all who responded, many of you raised valid and interesting points.
>
> Personally I am happy to send in Plain Text, although I consider the lack of
> "flowed text" in most clients (including thunderbird) to be a major issue.
>
> Since before I started this thread, my client has been set to send "plain text
> only", I sent the original email in HTML to attract attention. It certainly
> seems to have worked! :)
>
> With regard to Multipart email, in general I don't like it, partly because of a
> "feature" of thunderbird, and partly because the plain text version of a message
> written in HTML will often be incorrectly formatted.
> Thunderbird, and some other clients treat multipart sections as attachments
> (including vcards that outlook often sends) and on recent releases consumes a
> large chunk of screen displaying ICONS for each attached file (or mime part)
> In the old days it was not so bad, the attachments were listed as text, and
> often in a pane that was collapsed by default, sadly this is no longer the case.
> I suppose I really should come up with a suggested solution and raise a bug :(
>
> Once again thank you to all who participated, and may the list stay HTML free.
>
> Regards
> David Godfrey
>
> David Godfrey wrote:
> > Hi Everyone,
> >
> > The reason for this poll is below (for those that are interested)
> >
> > I would like to know how many people
> >     a) are happy to receive html
> >     b) prefer plain text
> >     c) require plain text
> >
> > At the end of the week (Friday GMT+8) I will post the results
> >
> > Regards
> > David Godfrey
> >
> > =======
> >
> > Just recently I have had two people on the lists query me,
> > Asking if I intended to send email in HTML
> >
> > Well actually, yes, I guess I did.
> > Partly because most people have HTML capable browsers,
> > and long before I sent an email on the list I had noticed that many
> > contributors also sent in HTML.
> > This made me think it was not a problem.
> >
> > I understand why mutt users may not like HTML, in it's standard form
> > mutt displays the html source.
> > There are probably other clients that this is also a problem for.
> >
> > One problem with plain text and modern clients, is that text is wrapped
> > at the senders end.
> > Normally to something like 72characters.
> > This is a huge waste of screen space where you may easily have 160 to
> > 300 or more characters available on a modern screen.
> > Worse is when the sender has changed the default to something large,
> > then you often have to scroll left and right as well as up and down to
> > see the whole message.
> > HTML on the other hand allows for dynamic rewrapping of the text by the
> > receiving client.
> > The sentence before last was all one line.
> > Change the width of this window, it should rewrap the text dynamically.
> >
> > HTML also allows simple formatting changes (_/*like this*/_) that can
> > often assist with readability.
> >
> > Either way the poll will tell us what everyone prefers.
> >
> > Regards
> > David Godfrey
> >
> >
> >
> >
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