[JDEV] HTML Mail

[Andrew Sayers]

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I received the message I'm replying to now as a plain text message with
no HTML attachments.  More than that, I found it literate and easy to
read.  Had I not known it was written in an HTML-friendly e-mail
program, I would never have guessed.  If the e-mail you sent was
deliberately text-only, please send me an HTML e-mail and I'll tell you
what I see.

Having followed Jamin's links about why HTML e-mail is bad, they seem to
be very good arguments for why (a) some people dislike HTML e-mail, (b)
HTML e-mail should be stripped out of mailing list posts, (c) HTML-only
mail with no plain-text is a Bad Thing, and (d) HTML e-mail is a
favourite among people with poor language skills.  That said, I don't
see how sending HTML e-mail rots the brain of the sender or the
receiver, or why people shouldn't be allowed to make a reasoned choice
about whether to use it.

The only argument that seems to be directly on the "HTML e-mail is a Bad
Thing" point is that it needlessly wastes bandwidth.  Though the case
may be different for people running large mailing lists, I've never
thought "curse those bandwidth-hogging OE users!", despite having spent
a long time with only a 9600bps connection in the last few years.

On the subject of PGP e-mail - yes, I'm, afraid OE's handling of PGP is
badly broken for no good reason.  When I realised you meant the entire
message (not just the PGP signature) required notepad, I remembered that
when I subscribed to jdev, I didn't turn on the option in my mail client
to handle broken mailers at the (mostly aesthetic) expense well-behaved
ones.  As you can see, I've changed that now.

	- Andrew
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