[pmmail-list] hyper-text?

[Richard Grevers]

On Fri, 26 Jul 2002 16:59:33 -0400, PMMail 2000 Support wrote:

>On Fri, 26 Jul 2002 13:42:17 -0700, Tim Roberts wrote:
>
>>The PMMail propensity for scanning for <.H.T.M.L.> tags within a text/plain 
>>section is an undesireable extension.
>
>In regards to this, this has always been an option that was hardcoded
>into PMMail whereby the default option was 'best' rendering. Well, the
>definition of 'best' was always to display HTML if it was present. The
>good news is, that this is now an option! When I release the new beta
>later this afternoon (Peter is compiling at this very moment) there
>will be a new option under the Preferences menu. I don't remember the
>exact text we used at this moment, but it will allow you to tell PMMail
>to only display the text/plain portion of multipart messages. Again, I
>have only seen this working in the debug version running on Peter's
>machine, but he assures me that everything is working fine.
>
A million thankyous. Personally I don't care much what PMMail 
does with HTML so long as I have the option not to see it, and 
so long as PMMail doesn't violate the RFC's by rendering 
text/plain as anything other than text/plain.

As a final (hopefully thread-ending) summary, my personal objections to
html email are:
1) Reduced readability. I find it harder to read due to various 
factors such as
 	- font size, 
	- excessive background contrast (I avoid black on white 
	  as much as possible, 	preferring a light grey), 
	- specifying less readable font faces than my preference.
	- having the occasional word highlighted in red etc. distracts 
	  from the reading flow.
2) Bandwidth. As mentioned, I pay by volume. I have seen some HTML 
emails use 150 characters
to encode a double linebreak (MS Word is the worst offender).
3) Total destruction of quote attribution.
	I usually forget to mention this one, but HTML email 
is useless in ongoing exchanges because many HTML capable
email clients fail to denote quoting when replying. (oh, we can't
have all those ugly ">'s "). They seem to presume that no exchange 
will go beyond original message and frst reply (top-posted of course).

I rest my case

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