HTML messages to mailing lists. Problem upgrading ncurses

[Stroller]

On 24 Jul 2008, at 01:09, Dale Schumacher wrote:
>
>> Also, could you possibly post to the list in plain text, not HTML?
>
> Sure, I could.  I thought it would be more clear to post the  
> transcript in fixed font.  Doesn't it come through as multi-part- 
> alternative anyway, so you should have a plain-text version too?   
> It seems the richer markup is often useful.


The fixed-width font you chose ("courier new,monospace"?) is  
honoured, but comes up as greyish on my mail client (Apple's Mail)  
and is difficult to read.

Generally speaking, posting in plain text allows me to view messages  
on my computer as I wish. HTML messages allow you to set a font that  
is unreadable in my machine, so I have to click extra buttons or  
keyboard shortcuts in order to make them viewable. This is usually  
more obvious when people set a font SIZE which is perfect on their PC  
but too small on my monitor.

I would _love_ a mail standard which allows setting bold, underline,  
italics and fixed-font without all the other rubbish that HTML email  
introduces. This would allow _you_ to set fixed-font and allow _me_  
to choose whether I wish to display it in courier, lucidia console or  
whatever (and presumably at full blackness rather than greyish).  
Unfortunately this would require co-operation from all the authors of  
email clients, so it's never likely to happen.

I don't really mind Amazon's HTML emails because they clearly have  
usability or web-design experts who spend hours on choosing fonts or  
how they specify them in their messages. In any case messages from  
Amazon, and most other online stores are always readable, so I don't  
block incoming HTML. But for mailing lists, plain-text is always safe  
and "right".

Stroller.