Re: tlug: Mew on (X)Emacs the way to go?

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

On Mon, 21 Sep 1998, John De Hoog wrote:

> Counter-opinion: HTML is bad in mailing lists, etc., but adds an
> arguably useful dimension to email updates from Internet magazines and
> newspapers, etc., such as those promoted by Linux-friendly Netscape in
> their In-box service. An increasing number of email clients in the
> non-Unix part of the world support viewing of such html mail right in
> the normal message viewer window, which means it's one more thing people
> drifting over from that part of the world expect to duplicate in Unix.

I still think it's evil and should be exterminated.  Even if we ignore the
fact that some people use mail clients that don't read HTML (I do, and I
consider Pine's inability in that area to be a feature, not a bug) and
others who hate HTML e-mail turn off that ability, HTML e-mail wastes a
lot of bandwidth with background wallpaper (why do people usually choose
the most sickening wallpaper possible for their e-mail?) and with
unncessary formatting. 

HTML e-mail also causes a problem for mailing lists, since an HTML mail
sent to majordomo gets regurgitated into the list with all its tags as
plain text, since a lot of people have their software set to send HTML
mail be default.

The only HTML-like behavior I consider acceptable in e-mail is hot URLs
and hot e-mail addresses.  Everything else is an annoyance.

Cheers,

Jonathan

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