I'm happy to alter my mailer to observe the netiquette you speak of. I'm afraid I wasn't aware of it. What is the reason behind it, may I ask?
What is the reason behind not posting an HTML only email to a mailing list? It's often extended to "Don't post in HTML at all", for a variety of reasons, some of which might be weighted more highly in this case due to the nature of this particular list. When you post in HTML or RTF, or to spell it out clearly, in anything that isn't plain ASCII or ISO-8859, you make it significantly harder for people whose mailers don't understand the format you use to read your email. While you can feel free to inconvenience your friends as much as you like, you should not assume that everyone on a mailinglist will have the ability to read whatever non-basic format you post in. Now, you might argue that "all modern email clients support HTML, so why can't I use it?". Quite simply, not everyone runs an email client that supports HTML. Or they've disabled it. I'd also suggest that on a LUG mailing list especially, the proportion of users with email clients that will not parse HTML is considerably higher than on your typical mailing list. If someone does have a client that doesn't have HTML read support, or if they have disabled it, they end up having to read the raw HTML to read your post. Yes, I can parse HTML. No, I don't want to unless I'm developing a webpage. I'll skip an HTML only email sooner than read it, especially with the cluttered HTML most email clients generate. This is mitigated somewhat by sending HTML and plain blocks, but you don't really gain much from HTML emails. Also, many people read mailing lists in digest form. HTML (and other formats) tend to break in digest mode. Basically, when posting to a mailing list, you're taking part in a community of peers. By sending HTML only emails, you're doing something equivalent to interrupting people's conversations in loud Swahili. I have to say here that I use thunderbird, which seems to like sending in HTML and plain by default, and will reply to HTML in HTML and plain by default. This isn't my preferred choice!
Daniel Lawson wrote:
As humourous as this thread is, HTML mails generally are discouraged to mailing lists, as a form of netiquette. If you send both HTML and plain text, then at least a sensible reader will only show plain text in appropriate circumstances, however it's still not preferred. If you can't make your mailer send both html and plaintext, then I'd go with the grandparent's advice of "Fix your mailer"