[GTALUG] HTML-only email messages on the mailing list (was Python 2 vs python 3 debate)

[Stewart Russell]

On 16 December 2014 at 14:39, Lennart Sorensen
<lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>
> Then don't use those to send messages to a mailing list.

There may be no other option. Also, many clients hide or fudge the
status. For instance, Gmail is currently claiming that it's going to
send this as plain text with no extraneous quoting. Will it do this? I
won't know until I send it.

> It can't.  At least not in a way that I can reply to cleanly in plain
> text.

For all its faults, Mozilla Thunderbird can quote HTML to plain text
quite well. But I'm sure there are many ways to mess up a reply to a
plain text message by quoting in the standard way. That which passes
for plain text is a minefield of assumptions (Your English Must Only
Have 26 Characters, and Criminally Limited Punctuation) leading to
naïve "markup free" limited solutions like Markdown.

> So unless people don't expect replies to their email, they better not
> send them in html in the first place.

Unfortunately, if you're going to block replies based on e-mail
format, you'll get a dwindling number of participants in the mailing
list. And nothing kills off user groups like lack of participation.

cheers,
 Stewart