Re: Could we start accepting rich-text postings on the gcc lists?

[Corinna Vinschen <vinschen@redhat.com>]

On Nov 23 16:18, Diego Novillo wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Jonathan Larmour <jifl@jifvik.org> wrote:
> 
> > Maybe something can be done to deal with these, but it may be that that
> > would involve so many compromises that keeping things as plain text only
> > might still be "least worst".
> 
> Thanks.  I'm actually surprised that we have all these problems with
> html e-mail, when just about every other development community seems
> to cope with it without ill side-effects.

There appears to be an unspoken agreement between the HTML email
advocates that these days *everybody* is using a HTML capable MUA.
This is just not true.  I'm using mutt and I'm sure I'm not the only
one being more comfortable using a simple terminal based MUA than one
of these shine but (IMHO) unusable GUI MUAs.

Also, for visually impaired users a text mail has the advantage to be
the simpler and least error-prone input for a braille display or a
narrator.  If you use styles and stuff and fluff, you don't add any
input which can't also be put into plain text, but you create harder to
understand mails.

Text mails are readable by *everyone*, even impaired users.  It's the
lowest common denominator everyone can agree upon and use without
trouble.  Therefore, from a practical and usability point of view, it's
much preferred over HTML mail.


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen
Cygwin Project Co-Leader
Red Hat