Re: [Sheflug] HTML mail (was Re: Linux)

[Alex Hudson <xxxxx [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 10:06:50AM +0100, Craig Andrews wrote:
> A few reasons not to use HTML email:

Just to play Devil's Advocate, there is a counter point :)

Reasons to use HTML mail:

1. There is no row length standard.
Some people use 72 columns (these people are the least annoying). Some
people use 76, 78, 80, 62, and other wierd numbers. How many times
have you opened a text e-mail to find that you need to scroll 
horizontally? 

2. Quoting blows.
Let's say you receive an e-mail broken at the 72nd character, and
you reply with "> ". All those lines are now 74 characters long. It's
likely that when the person replies back, some of those quoted lines
will get wrapped:
> > How many times have you received a quoted email which carries 
on
> > to the next line because it was just a short enough word to cause 
the 
> > line to break?
Of course, you can re-justify the text, but that breaks any other
'formatting' the person has applied, like indentation, 
 * lists,
etc.

3. Tables.
You can't do this in text, full stop.

4. Collaborative e-mail editing.
Ditto.

5. Symbols, international letters, etc.
You think £ comes out the same in all text clients? Nope, reliant on 
character set/font/etc. Esp. Windows->other. But £, ", etc.,
come out the same everywhere. This is especially important with
foreign characters - mail systems weren't designed to be 8-bit clean, 
and HTML & MIME allow 7-bit transfer safely.

I could go on :-P

Cheers,

Alex.

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