Mailing list etiquette (was Re: Sudo)
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"
Daniel Lawson wrote:
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!
Ditto. I've even set the plain text option hard in my prefs file, it just refuses. :( Any Thunderbird gurus out there that know how to fix this? I've followed the instructions at: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_FAQs_:_Using_Plain_Text G.
Greig McGill wrote:
Daniel Lawson wrote:
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!
Ditto. I've even set the plain text option hard in my prefs file, it just refuses. :( Any Thunderbird gurus out there that know how to fix this? I've followed the instructions at:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_FAQs_:_Using_Plain_Text
Hrm, just upgraded to 1.0.2 and it works now. Note to self: always run the latest stable version! :) G.
Daniel Lawson wrote:
Also, many people read mailing lists in digest form. HTML (and other formats) tend to break in digest mode.
I hope you won't take offense, but this seems like the only good reason to me. Surely, in the year 2005, when the HTML 4 spec has been around for eight years and has been commonly used to style emails for not much less time than that, it is reasonable to assume that any mail reader can parse it? From a purist point of view, I agree that emails should be in plain text. The reason I style them is because I like them to look pretty for less computer-savvy types who I regularly email, who don't know how to style things on their end. Additionally, there are some things that plain text simply won't do, and which I do occasionally use (lists being one). I'm not meaning to stir or be a pest; I just don't understand why any mail client in use today would not support HTML; or why people would turn it off? Surely, unless you're using OE, security isn't a problem. People seem to manage browsing the web without issues, and that's a far less controlled and predictable environment than email. So, as I asked before with my sudo question, what am I missing? Are people just pig-headed snobs who like to feel wronged and stand out as martyrs for the Old School? Bnonn
On Tue, 2005-04-05 at 11:41 +1200, Bnonn wrote:
From a purist point of view, I agree that emails should be in plain text. The reason I style them is because I like them to look pretty for less computer-savvy types who I regularly email, who don't know how to style things on their end. Additionally, there are some things that plain text simply won't do, and which I do occasionally use (lists being one).
I'm not meaning to stir or be a pest; I just don't understand why any mail client in use today would not support HTML; or why people would turn it off? Surely, unless you're using OE, security isn't a problem. People seem to manage browsing the web without issues, and that's a far less controlled and predictable environment than email.
So, as I asked before with my sudo question, what am I missing?
I often read my email by ssh'ing into the mail server and running a mail client in the terminal. Obviously, plain text works better for this. (Yes, people who use console mail clients can set up mailcaps so that text/html parts are piped to lynx or something, but it's generally annoying). Plain text is also easier to grep through your old mbox looking for something. I'm more likely to completely ignore any html-only email messages if it's sent to one of my ssh-only accounts. John
Also, many people read mailing lists in digest form. HTML (and other formats) tend to break in digest mode.
I hope you won't take offense, but this seems like the only good reason to me. Surely, in the year 2005, when the HTML 4 spec has been around for eight years and has been commonly used to style emails for not much less time than that, it is reasonable to assume that any mail reader can parse it?
No, it's not reasonable at all. Especially not for a mailing list which will have a high rate of people using command line only mail clients, or perhaps self-written mail clients. And people using telnet to read mail. It will happen, if only because it's *this* group of people.
From a purist point of view, I agree that emails should be in plain text. The reason I style them is because I like them to look pretty for
So do it?
less computer-savvy types who I regularly email, who don't know how to style things on their end. Additionally, there are some things that plain text simply won't do, and which I do occasionally use (lists being one).
I can do lists very easily in plain text: * This is an example of a list * This is a second entry in a list, which has a longer line which I format approrpriately. * And here we have a third entry in a list * Look, I can do sublists too!
I'm not meaning to stir or be a pest; I just don't understand why any mail client in use today would not support HTML; or why people would turn it off? Surely, unless you're using OE, security isn't a problem. People seem to manage browsing the web without issues, and that's a far less controlled and predictable environment than email.
Just because *you* use a mail client that supports HTML emails, does not mean every one *else* does. As I've said, this is mitigated by configuring your client to send an HTML block and a plain text block, however your client was not originally configured to do this, which is *probably* what prompted the "fix your client" thing anyway.
So, as I asked before with my sudo question, what am I missing? Are people just pig-headed snobs who like to feel wronged and stand out as martyrs for the Old School?
HTML emails are horrible, plain and simple. All it takes is getting mail from someone using Incredimail for you to see the truth in this statement.
Easy cowbow. No need to get excited. I wasn't aware, having not used commandline email clients, that they didn't support HTML. It seems odd to me that they wouldn't, but there may be a good reason. Given that there is such thing as a commandline web browser, I couldn't see any obvious reason that commandline mail clients wouldn't parse HTML; it's not as if there is some kind of inherent property of commandline that prevents it. Telnet, of course, is a problem. Fair enough. As for Incredimail, I agree that it's horrible, But I can point you to any number of horrible websites with animated gifs and frames, without invalidating the good websites which use correct code and good design. I'm surprised that you would make such an obviously fallacious argument (p2p is evil because people use it for illegal purposes, guns kill people, etc etc). Anyway, the issue is hardly a major one. Let's not get all twisted up eh. Daniel Lawson wrote:
Also, many people read mailing lists in digest form. HTML (and other formats) tend to break in digest mode.
I hope you won't take offense, but this seems like the only good reason to me. Surely, in the year 2005, when the HTML 4 spec has been around for eight years and has been commonly used to style emails for not much less time than that, it is reasonable to assume that any mail reader can parse it?
No, it's not reasonable at all. Especially not for a mailing list which will have a high rate of people using command line only mail clients, or perhaps self-written mail clients. And people using telnet to read mail. It will happen, if only because it's *this* group of people.
From a purist point of view, I agree that emails should be in plain text. The reason I style them is because I like them to look pretty for
So do it?
less computer-savvy types who I regularly email, who don't know how to style things on their end. Additionally, there are some things that plain text simply won't do, and which I do occasionally use (lists being one).
I can do lists very easily in plain text:
* This is an example of a list * This is a second entry in a list, which has a longer line which I format approrpriately. * And here we have a third entry in a list * Look, I can do sublists too!
I'm not meaning to stir or be a pest; I just don't understand why any mail client in use today would not support HTML; or why people would turn it off? Surely, unless you're using OE, security isn't a problem. People seem to manage browsing the web without issues, and that's a far less controlled and predictable environment than email.
Just because *you* use a mail client that supports HTML emails, does not mean every one *else* does. As I've said, this is mitigated by configuring your client to send an HTML block and a plain text block, however your client was not originally configured to do this, which is *probably* what prompted the "fix your client" thing anyway.
So, as I asked before with my sudo question, what am I missing? Are people just pig-headed snobs who like to feel wronged and stand out as martyrs for the Old School?
HTML emails are horrible, plain and simple. All it takes is getting mail from someone using Incredimail for you to see the truth in this statement.
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On Tue, Apr 05, 2005 at 11:58:37AM +1200, Daniel Lawson wrote:
HTML emails are horrible, plain and simple. All it takes is getting mail from someone using Incredimail for you to see the truth in this statement.
You can say that again, Incredimail is the devil. For those that use procmail you can whack the following in your .procmailrc to save getting most HTML messages, it'll take care of a fair bit of spam aswell (hence filename). :0 H * ^Content-Type: text/html spam Cheers, James.
I just don't understand why any mail client in use today would not support HTML; or why people would turn it off? Surely, unless you're using OE, security isn't a problem. People seem to manage browsing the web without issues, and that's a far less controlled and predictable environment than email.
I get sick of people sending me email with colours that make my eyes bleed. I hate people who send me email in random fonts that they've found on the internet that make me guess what they are trying to say. I have grown a healthy feeling of rage at people who think that I really wanted to download that 600mb image of themselves for their sig. I like my mail to be nice and consistant. I have eyesight issues, so I pump the fontsize up on my mail, and late at night when I'm tired I just can't be bothered squinting at the screen to make out what someones written who decided that I really needed to see it in their favourite 3pt font size. IT may be easy for /them/ to read but I can't. I force my mailer to display as text/plain always. Thus I get a consistant, easy to read mail that I can see, people trying to convince me to read mail their way just end up in the bitbucket. As an aside, spam often doesn't have sane text/plain parts, so I skip on all the weird porn spam too.
Daniel, while I do not disagree with you regarding limiting posts to ASCII on this mailing list, there are a number of good reasons to use HTML or rich text emails. So I thought I'd provide a counter opinion here. Most complaints I see regarding HTML mail stem from users using text mode MUAs like mutt. While I'm sure mutt is a great mail reader (I used elm and pine for a long time myself) it is rather limited when displaying html, hence people bitching about it. You are also correct in stating that some mailing list digest systems don't deal with HTML very well. But none of these problems are really the fault of a person who is posting in HTML. It would be perfectly feasible for mutt to render HTML in text mode. Lynx and elinks do this fine and it would work perfectly for most non-spam/marketing HTML email. Similarly it would be perfectly feasible for a mail digest application to correctly encapsulate the HTML so as to avoid corruption issues. The best mailing list digest systems I've seen package each mail as a separate mime entity. This allows smart MUAs to provide a mailbox like UI to the digest message. It also allows you to use MUA threading support. Which is much better than one plain text digest of all the messages in timestamp order. What you're really saying to people when you ask them to post in 7bit ASCII is, "my software lacks features capable of reading your mail successfully, please change your behaviour to suit my requirements". This is a fairly selfish position to take. Similarly refusing to change when people make this request politely is also fairly selfish. Unfortunately very few MUAs offer the feature marking individual addresses as "plain text" addresses. Most go the other way, assume plain text and mark addresses as capable of HTML email receipt, which I believe is backwards. The vast majority now can accept HTML, the minority prefer plain text. Also, asking people to post in 7bit ASCII (or ISO-8859), while being the lowest common denominator, limits mail to English or Latin based European languages. We live in a multicultural world so requests should really be for people to use Unicode, eg, UTF-8 which is backwards compatible with ASCII. A lot of new users have ventured forth onto the Internet in the last decade and Internet software has proliferated to accommodate them. Very few recent (or even old hand) Internet users will know that * means bold, / means italics, and _ means underline in ASCII emails. (eg, *bold* /italic/ _underline_). Instead they use features supplied by their MUAs to do the same. All very WYSIWYG. This is entirely understandable and is in fact preferable. When indexing mail with a computer I'd much rather the mail was formatted in XHTML than plain text. Which leads me into a discussion on the benefits of HTML (or rather XHTML) formatted email. There are a number of things that XHTML mail does better than plain text. <em>emphasis</em> means much more to a computer than *emphasis*. It is structured, and standardized. Similarly <h1>Heading</h1> means more than: HEADING ======= So just like on the web, using XHTML provides a parseable system for computer aided search. Google is already trying to provide searchable email archiving system with their Gmail product. I can see this extending to desktop MUAs. Systems like Beagle would benefit from XHTML formatted mail. Similarly on-line mailing list archives could also benefit from semantic context in emails to aid in search and cross reference. Another area where HTML email excels is in quoting previous messages. Many current MUAs break hideously when parsing previous text messages. How many of you have seen deep quotes go very bad with results like this:
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
Not very fun eh. Well with XHTML you can just <blockquote> everything and as long as the MUA nests them correctly the recipients MUA can flow everything very nicely. In fact, with the appropriate attributes and MUA support, quoted chucks can be colour coded and have author information attached so you even know who is quoting who. Sure there are a few downsides to XHTML. The one most people pull out is the size of the message. HTML formatted mail increases file size. It has to because it is adding information. Only when the senders MUA is a broken piece of junk (like Outlook) does this become a major problem though. The other major downside is patchy MUA support. Text mode MUAs don't seem to support HTML mail very well. Even GUI readers like Evolution (what I use) have pretty crappy HTML support. Products like Thunderbird are much better. It is just a mater of time and developer will to see excellent HTML or Rich Text mail support in the most common MUAs. My basic point here is that HTML mail in and of itself is not bad. In fact to is highly beneficial in a number of areas. The problem is the lack of proper implementation standards and the lack of MUAs which implement any standards were they to exist. So while politely asking posters to use a common denominator like ASCII is all well and good while we lack decent MUAs it is not a solution. It is just a stop gap that is avoiding the problem. Regards
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.
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!
-- Oliver Jones » Roving Code Warrior oliver(a)deeperdesign.com » +64 (21) 41 2238 » www.deeperdesign.com
On Tue, 2005-04-05 at 13:39 +1200, Oliver Jones wrote: <snip>
Another area where HTML email excels is in quoting previous messages. Many current MUAs break hideously when parsing previous text messages. How many of you have seen deep quotes go very bad with results like this:
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
Not very fun eh. Well with XHTML you can just <blockquote> everything and as long as the MUA nests them correctly the recipients MUA can flow everything very nicely. In fact, with the appropriate attributes and MUA support, quoted chucks can be colour coded and have author information attached so you even know who is quoting who.
There is no need to resort to HTML to fix this problem, RFC2646 defines format=flowed (see http://www.joeclark.org/ffaq.html for a great intro) which is intended to fix this exact problem, using *plain text*. Regards -- Matt Brown matt(a)mattb.net.nz Mob +64 275 611 544 www.mattb.net.nz
On Tue, 2005-04-05 at 13:57 +1200, Matt Brown wrote:
There is no need to resort to HTML to fix this problem, RFC2646 defines format=flowed (see http://www.joeclark.org/ffaq.html for a great intro) which is intended to fix this exact problem, using *plain text*.
That's great Matt. I was unaware of the format=flowed standard. It is wonderful that there is a way of doing this in plain text. And it addresses one of the (few) problems of plain text mail. However there are many other benefits to XHTML formatted mail not addressed by RFC 2646. Regards -- Oliver Jones » Roving Code Warrior oliver(a)deeperdesign.com » +64 (21) 41 2238 » www.deeperdesign.com
Oliver Jones wrote:
Daniel, while I do not disagree with you regarding limiting posts to ASCII on this mailing list, there are a number of good reasons to use HTML or rich text emails. So I thought I'd provide a counter opinion here.
I don't mind if mail clients post in both plain and in HTML. Well, I feel some twinges as it violates my preferred principle of least bandwidth, but I'll concede it's a fair tradeoff. I've already said this a couple of times.
Most complaints I see regarding HTML mail stem from users using text mode MUAs like mutt. While I'm sure mutt is a great mail reader (I used
Most complaints I have are actually stupidly broken HTML mailers, like my previous example of Incredimail. I know it's not a reason to dismiss HTML emails entirely, however it's the sort of thing that will only continue to cause problems. I still hold that education is an option, despite this sentiment seeming to go against what the vast majority of the online world want (instant gratification and no expectation that they will have to learn anything)
so as to avoid corruption issues. The best mailing list digest systems I've seen package each mail as a separate mime entity. This allows smart MUAs to provide a mailbox like UI to the digest message. It also allows you to use MUA threading support. Which is much better than one plain text digest of all the messages in timestamp order.
I wish we had a decent MUA. One that understood reply-to-list as distinct to reply-to-all (solves the entire debate of reply-to-munging). One that made use of vfolders for mailing lists or digests. If I had the time I'd write one. Perry and I were talking about this years ago, when trying to finish writing a compiler at 5am one Monday.
What you're really saying to people when you ask them to post in 7bit ASCII is, "my software lacks features capable of reading your mail successfully, please change your behaviour to suit my requirements".
Well, *my* software groks HTML just fine - I use Thunderbird. All I'm trying to say is "You're playing in a group now. You should consider everyone in the group, not just yourself."
Also, asking people to post in 7bit ASCII (or ISO-8859), while being the lowest common denominator, limits mail to English or Latin based European languages. We live in a multicultural world so requests should really be for people to use Unicode, eg, UTF-8 which is backwards compatible with ASCII.
Granted :)
*bold* /italic/ _underline_). Instead they use features supplied by their MUAs to do the same. All very WYSIWYG. This is entirely understandable and is in fact preferable. When indexing mail with a computer I'd much rather the mail was formatted in XHTML than plain text.
Except HTML isn't really WYSIWYG. As an author, you can't predict how it will be rendered. Perry's suggestion of using PDF isn't so far off, really. Emails are for basic communication. If you want to send something fancy, like a flashed up report, you're far far better off either posting it on a webpage and sending the URL[1], or turning it into a PDF and sending that instead. [1] Sending a URL doesn't really solve the rendering problem. I'm not sure how most MUA's render HTML - the moz based ones use gecko, OE etc uses IE's rendering, but I don't know how Opera / Incredimail / Pegasus / Eudora and so on use them. If they embed a standard html parsing control, then fine, otherwise they might do who knows what.
extending to desktop MUAs. Systems like Beagle would benefit from XHTML formatted mail. Similarly on-line mailing list archives could also benefit from semantic context in emails to aid in search and cross reference.
Yeah, I'm quite interested in how well Beagle works out.
Many current MUAs break hideously when parsing previous text messages. How many of you have seen deep quotes go very bad with results like this:
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
I have to say I haven't seen that in a long time. TB/Mozilla seems to "just work", perhaps because they are smart enough to deal.
My basic point here is that HTML mail in and of itself is not bad. In fact to is highly beneficial in a number of areas. The problem is the
No, it's not neccesarily bad. It's the way it tends to get used, and the blind assumption that everyone else can read it.
lack of proper implementation standards and the lack of MUAs which implement any standards were they to exist.
So while politely asking posters to use a common denominator like ASCII is all well and good while we lack decent MUAs it is not a solution. It is just a stop gap that is avoiding the problem.
What is the problem though? Is the problem "lack of HTML capability in MUAs"? I don't think it is. To clarify my original point: I'm not suggesting people shouldn't send HTML email in general. If you want to sending a happy bouncing frog and lots of animated smiley faces (or, if you have a sane use for HTML, that too) in email to a friend / family member / business acquintance /prospective employer, then that's fine. Possibly detrimental to your career, but not my place to comment on. When sending mail to potentially hundreds or thousands of people, many of whom you don't know, you should try for a lower common denominator. Especially when it's a list filled with people who are likely to be using software written in 1985 on an Acorn to read the email. Granted, this isn't mentioned anywhere up front. Maybe it should be in the AUP of the list? (along with "Don't diss other people's mothers", and please spell "Microsoft" correctly, thanks)
Daniel Lawson wrote:
Granted, this isn't mentioned anywhere up front. Maybe it should be in the AUP of the list? (along with "Don't diss other people's mothers", and please spell "Microsoft" correctly, thanks)
It's not, you're correct. By the way, your mother was great last night, and M$ LookOut renders HTML fine. ( ;-) for the hypocrisy police ). In the absence of an updated AUP (which we'll have to run past the committee etc.), I will make a Fistly decree in the meantime to end this really long, and fairly off-topic thread. 1. DO NOT post to the list in HTML if you can avoid it. Accidents hapen, we don't mind accidents. If someone asks you politely to change to plain text for posting to the list, please comply. 2. DO NOT continue this thread on list! ;) So speaks the Fist. Get up, you are worthy. G.
On Tue, Apr 05, 2005 at 02:36:14PM +1200, Daniel Lawson wrote:
sure how most MUA's render HTML - the moz based ones use gecko, OE etc uses IE's rendering, but I don't know how Opera / Incredimail / Pegasus / Eudora and so on use them. If they embed a standard html parsing control, then fine, otherwise they might do who knows what.
If HTML messages were to become the email standard you can guarantee Microsoft will adjust their MUAs to send M$HTML (the broken stuff) so that competing MUAs couldn't render anything properly. IMO plain text is just nicer to read. James.
participants (8)
-
Bnonn -
Daniel Lawson -
Greig McGill -
James Clark -
John R. McPherson -
Matt Brown -
Oliver Jones -
Perry Lorier