From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 7481 invoked by alias); 24 Nov 2012 10:08:42 -0000 Received: (qmail 7398 invoked by uid 22791); 24 Nov 2012 10:08:23 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from aquarius.hirmke.de (HELO calimero.vinschen.de) (217.91.18.234) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.83/v0.83-20-g38e4449) with ESMTP; Sat, 24 Nov 2012 10:08:18 +0000 Received: by calimero.vinschen.de (Postfix, from userid 500) id 15861E0A54; Sat, 24 Nov 2012 11:08:16 +0100 (CET) Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2012 17:14:00 -0000 From: Corinna Vinschen To: overseers@sourceware.org Subject: Re: Could we start accepting rich-text postings on the gcc lists? Message-ID: <20121124100816.GB17347@calimero.vinschen.de> Mail-Followup-To: overseers@sourceware.org References: <50AFE5D0.6090205@jifvik.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Mailing-List: contact overseers-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: overseers-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2012-q4/txt/msg00083.txt.bz2 On Nov 23 16:18, Diego Novillo wrote: > On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Jonathan Larmour 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