OT: Flamebait: Text vs HTML email
This is not meant to cause Holy Wars or dissent. It's just that I
believe that it's healthy to every once in a while question the status
quo, to question authority, to ask why things are done they way they are
done. And after getting an informative email from a colleague in HTML
format, this issue came up in my thinking, which set me to questioning.
As a general rule, members of this list prefer email to be in plain text
format. Over the years I've tried to adhere to that (and will continue
to do so). However, I'm thinking that perhaps it's time to rethink that
"rule". A more graphical format like HTML can convey more information
(charts, images, textual structure, color, font, etc) than just plain text.
Advantages of text only:
--------------------------------
Text takes less bandwidth than HTML.
Text is readable on any system; HTML may not be (ie. mutt, etc).
Text is more easily manipulated with text tools, such as sed.
Non-text may have "issues" in international settings.
other?
There are indeed good reasons for using plain text. However, email is
for conveying information, and it seems to me that more info can be
conveyed with HTML than with text. Bandwidth issues and filesize issues
are less of an issue today than five years ago (realizing that some
parts of the world still live in 1200baud-and-pay-by-the-minute Land).
Text-manipulation may be a bit more difficult with HTML, but surely
that's solvable.
To me, the most significant compelling reason to stick to plain text for
email is for those text-only email readers.
Can text-only mail readers (ie mutt) be designed to read HTML messages?
After all, lynx is a "text-only" app that can deal with HTML; why can't
mutt, etc? If so, then why not use HTML? If not, does the "cost" of
abandoning text-only readers outweigh the cost of reduced information
flow, or is the opposite true (or perhaps it's a tie)?
Just questioning; hoping to gain some insight.
Thanks!
Kent
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