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Re: Posting in the tiniest print possible



At 06:53 PM 5/20/2005, Gary Lehmann wrote:
>Was in HTML and tiny print--it should be noted that whenever possible, one
>should post in Plain Text--that wot Kim likes and he owns the joint.
>Altho many do not--but it's that tiny print that gives me pause.

It isn't about what I like or don't like. Using plain text to post to 
mailing lists has been considered good internet etiquette since the 
beginning of time. Using html has long been considered impolite. So it is 
really about whether you are being a dick to the list or not.

The reasons are many:

- There are many different people on a list using many different mail 
reading programs. These handle html formatting in many different ways. It 
is very likely that the nice formatting on your screen looks terrible for 
many other subscribers, or is completely unreadable. In some cases, the 
non-standard html code used by some popular email programs even causes 
errors in other programs trying to read it.

- html formatted emails are used by hackers and spammers for a variety of 
evil purposes, to infect and spy on people. For this reason, many prudent 
people turn off the html features of their mail reading program. This 
means 
it is further likely that your html mail will look weird on other people's 
screen.

- html formatting can screw up the digest versions of mailing lists, 
making 
the digest hard or impossible to read for many people, even screwing up 
other people's nice plain text posts.

- Also, some people's email programs will view the digest as plain text, 
and your mail will just look like html code for them. Most people won't 
bother to try to read your html code and just skip over it.

- html formatting adds at least 3 times more crap to your email for the 
html code. (sometimes waaaayyyy more than that, I've seen a few sentences 
turn into 200k emails.) This pointlessly wastes bandwidth and disk space 
for EVERYBODY on the list, not just me and my server. Not everybody on the 
list has a fast connection or unlimited email disk space.

- The extra html code means the digest gets sent out prematurely since you 
hogged up all the space, further irritating digest readers.

- And for all the headaches caused, the html formatting adds no useful 
content that wasn't already there with the plain text!

kim



______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com