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RE: Posting in the tiniest print possible



This was an excellent summary on plain-text vs html.
Could something like this be automatically sent to
new subscribers?

Cheers,
Scott M2
 
http://www.dreamSTATE.to
ambientelectronicsoundscapes
http://www.THEAMBiENTPiNG.com
 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kim Flint [mailto:kflint@loopers-delight.com] 
> Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2005 10:45 PM
> To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
> Subject: 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 
> 
>