On 23/10/2020 21.07, Christian Boltz wrote:
Hello,
Am Donnerstag, 22. Oktober 2020, 23:31:26 CEST schrieb Carlos E. R.:
We have been testing html on the offtopic mail list for some time now, works nicely. But I suspect that one subscriber went out. There are some diehards that hate the very idea of html posts, although it allows some formatting like tables, and is not evil per se.
Tables might be a (maybe the only?) positive example of HTML usage, and HTML mails are not really "evil", but in many cases harder to read ;-)
Explaining some procedure to someone, with photos and diagrams shown in context to the text. The photos do not need to be attached, they can be linked to susepaste, for example, so they do not add size to the mail. :-) Writing a long text, using *some* formatting (not abusing the formatting). Like, a larger font (does not need to specify which font) for section tittles. Or paragraph indents, or *bold* or /cursive/, used when really needed. :-) I have never felt the need to define the font, nor the colour. Maybe I defined the colour once for some specific need. What I do is tell Thunderbird to use "larger font" or "smaller font", but I do not specify which font - at least not myself, I don't know for sure if Thunderbird does it on my back. I tried on the OP, and I can resize the text and the graphic using ctrl + or -, same as with plain text. And of course, you can limit the total size of the email, define some netiquete rules, whatever (perhaps it is possible to enforce some filters?). As I see it, it would be left to each particular list to decide if they want it or not.
HTML allows to define too much - and I really prefer to read mails in the font _I_ like (even if the sender prefers Comic Sans ;-) with the font size I like, and with quotes colored as defined in my mail program. IMHO mails are about the content, not about looking nice. I'm also quite sure that having all mails looking the same way makes reading easier and faster, at least for me.
There might be usecases for HTML mails, but I don't think that our mailinglists would benefit from using HTML mails. And I'm quite sure that I'll always prefer the text/plain variant if both are included ;-)
There is use and there is abuse. I can send html to the offtopic mail list, but I only use it when sending an article, because it saves me effort as compared to /translating/ to plain text. Then all subsequent posts continue in text mode. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar)