Message body cleanup requested

[Andy Bradford]

Thus said "Brad Dorner" on Wed, 30 Apr 2003 09:53:56 MDT:

> With that said, I must say that this is the only group that "I" get on
> that has this problem.

You  must  not  participate  on  many technical  mailing  lists  on  the
Internet---remember, the Internet is much larger than just a few Windows
centric systems.  I am on a  number of mailing lists  which have members
from all over the world on  them and text/plain is the ``lingua franca''
for those. And  in fact, none of  the mailing lists I'm  on recommend or
condone the  use of  HTML in  email. So,  PLUG is  no different  in that
respect.

> As I  have approached my customers  about this they have  all said the
> same thing.  "This is the 21st  century..." In this respect  I tend to
> agree with them. HTML is handled very well in every email system that,
> again, I use.

But what about  the email systems that others use?  And the argument for
the 21st  century is  weak, I wish  I could tell  Qwest that  my 256kbps
upload link is  slow and that we  are now in the 21st  century and 1mbps
should be the  standard all around, but they just  don't buy that. Also,
what do your customers understand about  HTML? Do they even know what it
is? Do  they understand the  privacy and security implications  of using
HTML email?  Why do you think  Outlook is so good  at spreading viruses?
Maybe not due to HTML, but it's because of the level of ``21st century''
integrations  that have  been  made; probably  due  to ``21st  century''
managers who have  a bottom line to meet and  don't care about security.
I'm  sure the  Microsoft programmers  are good  programmers, but  all it
takes is one bad manager.

Also,  I don't  think  it's a  problem with  Linux  or even  alternative
operating systems at  all. I would venture to guess  that there are more
HTML reading email clients for Linux  than there are for Windows at this
point.

I personally don't  have a problem with people sending  email in HTML to
mailing  lists. If  they want  a reply  from me,  they will  send it  in
text/plain,  otherwise  I  just  delete it---I  have  enough  email  and
deleting one more won't hurt. I can se Sasha's point about receiving the
digest though. Why  don't you subscribe to the digest  and see what he's
talking about?

Andy
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