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Re: OT: Flamebait: Text vs HTML email



on Wed, 24 Jul 2002 03:27:25PM -0700, Paul E Condon insinuated:
> To me, the most compelling reason to stick to plain text is that it
> encourages authors to say what they mean, and disables or
> discourages muddled thinking.

uh, isn't that like asserting that writing in english as opposed to
german (oo, now *there's* flame bait! ;) disables or discouranges
muddled thinking??  mightn't some ideas actually be expressed more
concisely in color?

not that i'm not suggesting that that might apply to anything of a
nature that would be relevant to this list, but rather to what's
communicated over email as a whole.

> On a few occasions, I have broken off writing a question to this
> list because the act of writing the question forced me to think, and
> I got the answer, without egg on my face. (Not many, but a few. :-) )

i do that a *lot*.  that's the beauty of these lists!

> This is not a flame, just my considered opinion. I really like words
> and text.

sure, and so do i.  and i also hold that in the right context (note
the parameter), the format can say a lot.

but for the bulk of email, while i don't believe in a soft linguistic
determinism of plaintext-vs-html, i think that text suffices.  and all
the html i get is spam, too.

</nori>

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