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

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 03:49:09PM -0500, Stewart Russell wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 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.

It also for the longest time would not actually put '>' on the lines of
the plain text if you asked it to send both html and plain text versions.
Not sure that bug has ever been fixed.

And it is hardly a useful email client when you do email over ssh.
I use mutt and edit with vim.

> 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.

I will happily ignore html messages and not reply to them.

-- 
Len Sorensen