On Thursday, 27th October 2011 at 08:48:22 (GMT -0400), Alex Buie wrote:
If his HTML bothers you that much, why not turn off HTML rendering in your client?
You're kidding, right? You can't seriously be suggesting that because of a few non-compliant individuals, people should switch off HTML rendering in their software, thus making HTML unreadable in emails where it *is* justified, such as in newsletters (and I receive dozens of those daily). Also, you're forgetting not every email program gives you that option. I follow this mailing list in 3 places: on my Windows PC, on the iPad, and on the iPhone. The iPad and the iPhone don't give you the option to switch off HTML. (And why should they?) Also, Alex, you're disregarding the main issue with those AOL emails: they break the proper threading of messages from this list. Maybe you enjoy chaos in your inboxes, but I don't.
On a side note, your "[processed by "The Bat!", Version 4.2.44.2]" message annoys me. I'm on several technical mailing lists where that would be considered unacceptable. Perhaps you could change that?
Sure! The Bat allows you to set up folder-level and/or addressee-level reply templates. However, if you truly are on several tech mailing lists, you might have noticed that including one's software specs in one's signature is a fairly common practice. (In fact, all of us might expand our signatures on this list to include data on our OSs and the readers we use for e-books, which might provide interesting insight into how each of us accesses Project Gutenberg material.)
(This is the internet.)
Perhaps the "internet" is synonymous with "anarchy" and "willfulness" for you, but I see that differently. My first association for "Internet communication" is "netiquette". And the basic principle of netiquette is: "Before you oblige your own wishes and preferences regarding Internet communication, first think of how your Internet communication will affect *others*." Here's another example of the harmfulness of HTML in emails. It's an age-old convention in mailing lists to quote someone else's text by prefacing it with a ">" sign at the beginning of every line. This works beautifully in plain-text -- but only in plain-text, not in HTML. That's because in plain-text, all quality email software recognizes the quote sign and colour-codes it accordingly, making the overall text very nice to read. So, here is the nice colour-coding of a plain-text message showing a quotation: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10440809/misc/quoting_in_plain-text.png And here is the unspeakable ugliness produced by HTML emails: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10440809/misc/quoting_in_HTML.png.gif Besides enforcing your own choice of font (and its size!) onto your readers, you're also breaking the colour coding of the messages, you're breaking (if you use AOL) every thread into which you submit a message, you potentially make your message unreadable for some list members or in the message archives, etc. etc. Now if you were to proceed according to netiquette, you'd say: "Yeah, even though I prefer HTML myself, it seems like it's creating problems for the folks I'm talking to... so I guess I'll just abandon HTML and switch over to plain-text like everyone else." PS: As to your own top-posting, Alex... I know quite a few tech lists where that is a big no-no as well, and would get a list member banned in no time. ;-))) -- Yours, Alex. www.aboq.org [processed by "The Bat!", Version 4.2.44.2]