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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