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

[Andrew Pinski <pinskia@gcc.gnu.org>]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 11:53 AM, Diego Novillo <dnovillo@google.com> wrote:
> In this day and age of rich-text capable mailers, restricting postings
> to be text-only seems quaint and antiquated.  Are there any hard
> requirements that force us to only accept plain text messages?

I think it is a bad idea to accept non plain text messages (except for
attachments).

>
> I'm seeing two developments because of this:
>
> 1. Frustration on the part of developers who get their posts rejected.
>  This happens to me when I'm on my phone, the phone mailer does not
> even offer the option of sending text-only mail (I filed a bug about
> it ~3 years ago).  This is mildly annoying, but annoying nonetheless.
> Recently, I had to teach a couple of new developers how to set their
> mailer to send plaintext messages (I felt like a dinosaur).

This frustration is going to be on other people side if we start
allowing rich-text emails.  Plain text is still more readable than
most richtext for the plain reason as the formatting is gone.
Formatting in rich-text emails make most richtext emails hard to read.
 People like to reply in a different color and that just makes it hard
to figure out who is replying to who.

If you feel like a dinosaur for helping developers to set their
mailers to send plaintext messages, then there is a problem with how
people are learning about email and the internet and why richtext is
bad news.

>
> 2. Posts disappear and are not re-posted in text form.  If the message
> was CC'd to another maintainer, then the original posters does not
> care that their message got rejected.  They got to their intended
> recipient, who typically responds, leaving broken threads on the
> mailing list.  For example, check the thread index for
> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2012-11/msg00011.html.  You'll
> notice that there are no messages from Dmitry Vyukov, despite him
> sending no less than 6 replies to that thread.

It is up to the contributor to read the requirements before submitting
patches and plain text emails are a documented requirement right now.

Bad formatted emails are less likely to happen with plain text.
Allowing rich text will cause people to have worse formatted email.

>
> I'm more concerned about #2.  Today's software is more than capable of
> dealing with rich text.  Is it really that important for us to stick
> to this requirement?
>
> If the reason is "because we like it this way", please consider the
> impact on contributors and would-be contributors.  Why add one more
> aggravation to the already long list?

It is not just because we like it this way, rich text (or in some
cases html) can cause security holes.  Formatting issues are worse
with rich text emails.  Also once you start allowing richtext emails,
you will find that people start depending on rich text to format
tables and other things and the plain text part will not be readable.

Thanks,
Andrew Pinski

PS I think this really should go to the gcc@ list rather than
overseers list because even though overseers is in control of the
machines, the decision about allowing rich text is a gcc policy rather
than a machine policy.