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

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

[Diego Novillo]

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'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).

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.

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?


Thanks.  Diego.

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

[Andrew Pinski]

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.

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

[Ruben Safir]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 12:12:17PM -0800, Andrew Pinski wrote:
> 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?


incorrect accessment

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

[Diego Novillo]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 3:14 PM, Ruben Safir <ruben@mrbrklyn.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 12:12:17PM -0800, Andrew Pinski wrote:
>> 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?
>
>
> incorrect accessment

I can't parse this.

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

[Ruben Safir]

> >
> > incorrect accessment
> 
> I can't parse this.


Maybe HTML markup can help you.


Stupid conversation....

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

[Diego Novillo]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 3:31 PM, Ruben Safir <ruben@mrbrklyn.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > incorrect accessment
>>
>> I can't parse this.
>
>
> Maybe HTML markup can help you.
>
>
> Stupid conversation....

No need to respond in such an arrogant and condescending manner.  I do
not understand what "incorrect accessment" means.


Diego.

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

[Ruben Safir]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 03:35:57PM -0500, Diego Novillo wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 3:31 PM, Ruben Safir <ruben@mrbrklyn.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > incorrect accessment
> >>
> >> I can't parse this.
> >
> >
> > Maybe HTML markup can help you.
> >
> >
> > Stupid conversation....
> 
> No need to respond in such an arrogant and condescending manner.  I do
> not understand what "incorrect accessment" means.


Here is 50 cents kid.  Get yourself a real operating system.

Are we done with this nonsense yet and can we get back to discussing
the GNU complier?

Ruben
~~~
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world  - RI Safir 1998
© Copyright for the Digital Millennium

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

[Diego Novillo]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 3:12 PM, Andrew Pinski <pinskia@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> 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.

What mailers are you thinking of?  All the ones I've used in the last
decade or so have been perfectly capable of dealing with rich-text.

> 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.

I'm trying to adapt to the new reality of the internet.  Not fight it.


>
>>
>> 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.

It is also up to the contributor to not care and take their
contributions elsewhere.


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

Do you have data to support this?

>
>>
>> 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.

Again.  Data?

> 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.

Sure.  First I wanted to find out whether this requirement is just a
technical limitation with our mailing list software.


Diego.

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

[Ruben Safir]

Why are you using google for your mail?  Can't you get a real mail
client and a real mail access?  Or maybe you work for google, in which 
I can undersand it.

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

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Diego Novillo <dnovillo@google.com> writes:

> Sure.  First I wanted to find out whether this requirement is just a
> technical limitation with our mailing list software.

It is not a technical limitation.  We explicitly reject HTML e-mail.  We
could accept it.

As Jonathan pointed out, accepting HTML e-mail and then displaying it in
the web archives will make us even more of a spam target than we already
are, and will mean that we will need some mechanisms for identifying and
removing spam and virus links in the web pages.

A possible compromise would be to accept HTML e-mail that has a text
alternative, and only display the text alternative in the archives.
That would also work for people who have text-only e-mail readers.  In
general that would help for people who use e-mail programs that send
HTML with text alternatives by default.  But it would fail for people
who actually use HTML formatting in a meaningful way.  And, of course,
this would require some administrative work to be done.

I don't really care one way or the other on this issue.  That said:

1) People who send HTML e-mail ought to get a bounce message, so I would
think they would be able to reform.

2) The fact that Android refuses to provide a non-HTML e-mail capability
is ridiculous but does not seem to me to be a reason for us to change
our policy.

Ian

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

[Robert Dewar]

> 2) The fact that Android refuses to provide a non-HTML e-mail capability
> is ridiculous but does not seem to me to be a reason for us to change
> our policy.

Surely there are altenrative email client for Android that have plain
text capability???

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

[Daniel Berlin]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:47 PM, Robert Dewar <dewar@adacore.com> wrote:
>
>> 2) The fact that Android refuses to provide a non-HTML e-mail capability
>> is ridiculous but does not seem to me to be a reason for us to change
>> our policy.
>
>
> Surely there are altenrative email client for Android that have plain
> text capability???
>

Yes, we should expect users to change, instead of keeping up with users.

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

[Robert Dewar]

On 11/24/2012 12:59 PM, Daniel Berlin wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:47 PM, Robert Dewar <dewar@adacore.com> wrote:
>>
>>> 2) The fact that Android refuses to provide a non-HTML e-mail capability
>>> is ridiculous but does not seem to me to be a reason for us to change
>>> our policy.
>>
>>
>> Surely there are altenrative email client for Android that have plain
>> text capability???
>>
>
> Yes, we should expect users to change, instead of keeping up with users.

Well my experience with HTML-burdened mail is awful. From people who set
ludicrous font choices, to bad color choices, to inappropriate use of
multiple fonts, to inappropriate use of colors, it's a mess.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect serious developers to
send text messages in text form. BTW, our experience at AdaCore, where
we get lots of email from lots of customers, users, hobbyists, and
students, sending email from all sorts
of programs, is that yes, occasionally they send us HTML burdened
email, but almost always when we ask them to adjust their mailers to
send text, they can do so without problems.

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

[Richard Biener]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 7:08 PM, Robert Dewar <dewar@adacore.com> wrote:
> On 11/24/2012 12:59 PM, Daniel Berlin wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:47 PM, Robert Dewar <dewar@adacore.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> 2) The fact that Android refuses to provide a non-HTML e-mail capability
>>>> is ridiculous but does not seem to me to be a reason for us to change
>>>> our policy.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Surely there are altenrative email client for Android that have plain
>>> text capability???
>>>
>>
>> Yes, we should expect users to change, instead of keeping up with users.
>
>
> Well my experience with HTML-burdened mail is awful. From people who set
> ludicrous font choices, to bad color choices, to inappropriate use of
> multiple fonts, to inappropriate use of colors, it's a mess.
>
> I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect serious developers to
> send text messages in text form. BTW, our experience at AdaCore, where
> we get lots of email from lots of customers, users, hobbyists, and
> students, sending email from all sorts
> of programs, is that yes, occasionally they send us HTML burdened
> email, but almost always when we ask them to adjust their mailers to
> send text, they can do so without problems.

Hey - customers even send mails with only a pdf attachment that
contains a scanned sheet of paper with hand-writing ...

Richard.

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

[Ruben Safir]

> 
> Yes, we should expect users to change, instead of keeping up with users.



No - we shouldn't punish developers by making them use stupid mime
translational servces that breaks the replying mechanism in EMACS and
mutt because they are stupidly try to post to a tech mailing list on
their android as if it is facebook.

Blah.

Ruben
-- 
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software

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

[Jonathan Wakely]

On 24 November 2012 17:47, Robert Dewar wrote:
>
>> 2) The fact that Android refuses to provide a non-HTML e-mail capability
>> is ridiculous but does not seem to me to be a reason for us to change
>> our policy.
>
>
> Surely there are altenrative email client for Android that have plain
> text capability???

The official gmail app, which obviously integrates well with gmail and
is good in most other ways, won't send non-html mails.

I find that very annoying, but I get annoyed with the app and am not
suggesting the GCC lists should change to deal with it.

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

[Robert Dewar]

On 11/24/2012 1:13 PM, Jonathan Wakely wrote:

> The official gmail app, which obviously integrates well with gmail and
> is good in most other ways, won't send non-html mails.

There seem to be a variety of alternatives

> http://www.tested.com/tech/android/3110-the-best-alternative-android-apps-to-manage-all-your-email/

K-9 is a free software client that looks interesting
>
> I find that very annoying, but I get annoyed with the app and am not
> suggesting the GCC lists should change to deal with it.
>

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

[Richard Biener]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 6:47 PM, Robert Dewar <dewar@adacore.com> wrote:
>
>> 2) The fact that Android refuses to provide a non-HTML e-mail capability
>> is ridiculous but does not seem to me to be a reason for us to change
>> our policy.
>
>
> Surely there are altenrative email client for Android that have plain
> text capability???

Of course, I use one.

Richard.

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

[Daniel Berlin]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:13 PM, Ian Lance Taylor <ian@airs.com> wrote:
> Diego Novillo <dnovillo@google.com> writes:
>
>> Sure.  First I wanted to find out whether this requirement is just a
>> technical limitation with our mailing list software.
>
> It is not a technical limitation.  We explicitly reject HTML e-mail.  We
> could accept it.
>
> As Jonathan pointed out, accepting HTML e-mail and then displaying it in
> the web archives will make us even more of a spam target than we already
> are, and will mean that we will need some mechanisms for identifying and
> removing spam and virus links in the web pages.

I'd love to see data on this.  As others have pointed out, almost
every other open source project accepts html email.
I went through, for example, the LLVM email archives, and i don't see
a massive amount of spam.
Do you have reason to believe our existing spam detection solution
will start to fail massively when presented with html email?
After all, if most of the HTML email is spam, something being HTML
email is a great signal for it.
>
> A possible compromise would be to accept HTML e-mail that has a text
> alternative, and only display the text alternative in the archives.
> That would also work for people who have text-only e-mail readers.  In
> general that would help for people who use e-mail programs that send
> HTML with text alternatives by default.  But it would fail for people
> who actually use HTML formatting in a meaningful way.
I have not seen html formatting used in the other open source
projects, just text/html emails.

>  And, of course,
> this would require some administrative work to be done.
>
> I don't really care one way or the other on this issue.  That said:
>
> 1) People who send HTML e-mail ought to get a bounce message, so I would
> think they would be able to reform.

At that point they probably don't care.
Honestly, any community that actively makes it hard for me to send
mail from a common email program, is a huge turn-off.
Folks can retort that we may not want users who don't want to take the
time to send non-html email.  I doubt this is actually true, since the
majority of folks i've seen are just using clients that default to
html email, and aren't doing anything obnoxious.

Note that *we* are currently rejecting multipart/alternative if it
contains text/html, even if it contains text/plain.
This is fairly obnoxious.

> 2) The fact that Android refuses to provide a non-HTML e-mail capability
> is ridiculous but does not seem to me to be a reason for us to change
> our policy.

Expect it to get worse.  Folks can say what they like, but other
communities i'm a part of, and are much larger than GCC, deal with
HTML email with zero problem.  All bouncing HTML email is really doing
is turning away some people.

In the "olden days", when html email was some shitty gobbledygook
produced by an old version of exchange, this may have made sense.  In
the days now of relatively sane multipart/alternative emails, it just
seems like folks being annoyed that the rest of the world changed.



>
> Ian

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

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

Hi -

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:58:33PM -0500, Daniel Berlin wrote:
> [...]
> I'd love to see data on this.  As others have pointed out, almost
> every other open source project accepts html email. [...]
> Do you have reason to believe our existing spam detection solution
> will start to fail massively when presented with html email? [...]

Yes.  I run a similar spamassassin setup at home as sourceware's, and
it routinely lets through spam that is disguised in HTML.  That is
after all trivial to do - font size=1 color=white or somesuch gunk.
Annoyingly, the spam's hidden bayes-countering filler goo shows up in
its full html-to-text glory in a text-based MUA.

> After all, if most of the HTML email is spam, something being HTML
> email is a great signal for it.

Dunno about "most", but "an uncomfortable amount" is right.


> [...]
> Note that *we* are currently rejecting multipart/alternative if it
> contains text/html, even if it contains text/plain.
> This is fairly obnoxious.

See above.  Spam filtering on HTML bodies is not very effective,
unless one's a gmail.  There is no mechanical way to ensure that the
multipart alternative text/plain is equivalent -- and if it were,
then it could just have been sent as is in the first place (were it
not for MUA intransigence).


- FChE

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

[Ruben Safir]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:58:33PM -0500, Daniel Berlin wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:13 PM, Ian Lance Taylor <ian@airs.com> wrote:
> > Diego Novillo <dnovillo@google.com> writes:
> >
> >> Sure.  First I wanted to find out whether this requirement is just a
> >> technical limitation with our mailing list software.
> >
> > It is not a technical limitation.  We explicitly reject HTML e-mail.  We
> > could accept it.
> >
> > As Jonathan pointed out, accepting HTML e-mail and then displaying it in
> > the web archives will make us even more of a spam target than we already
> > are, and will mean that we will need some mechanisms for identifying and
> > removing spam and virus links in the web pages.
> 
> I'd love to see data on this.  

Go generate it with you own mailing list and let us know.

> As others have pointed out, almost
> every other open source project accepts html email.


Wrong

And it is silly to burden everyone else with the bulk and storage of
that nonsense, let alone the multiple fonts and standards and CSS style
sheets and missappropriate images and links.

Its time for users to get with it and not use every stupid thing shoved
down their through.  And PLEASE tell me you write you C programming in
adroind using your thumb prints.

Ruben

-- 
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software

So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world  - RI Safir 1998

http://fairuse.nylxs.com  DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002

"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"

"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we need the ability to participate in our own society."

"> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be damned.<
You must be a stupid engineer then, because politcs and technology have been attached at the hip since the 1st dynasty in Ancient Egypt.  I guess you missed that one."

© Copyright for the Digital Millennium

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

[Daniel Berlin]

Sorry dude, I don't engage in substantive conversation with abusive trolls.


On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Ruben Safir <ruben@mrbrklyn.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:58:33PM -0500, Daniel Berlin wrote:
>> On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:13 PM, Ian Lance Taylor <ian@airs.com> wrote:
>> > Diego Novillo <dnovillo@google.com> writes:
>> >
>> >> Sure.  First I wanted to find out whether this requirement is just a
>> >> technical limitation with our mailing list software.
>> >
>> > It is not a technical limitation.  We explicitly reject HTML e-mail.  We
>> > could accept it.
>> >
>> > As Jonathan pointed out, accepting HTML e-mail and then displaying it in
>> > the web archives will make us even more of a spam target than we already
>> > are, and will mean that we will need some mechanisms for identifying and
>> > removing spam and virus links in the web pages.
>>
>> I'd love to see data on this.
>
> Go generate it with you own mailing list and let us know.

>
>> As others have pointed out, almost
>> every other open source project accepts html email.
>
>
> Wrong
>
> And it is silly to burden everyone else with the bulk and storage of
> that nonsense, let alone the multiple fonts and standards and CSS style
> sheets and missappropriate images and links.
>
> Its time for users to get with it and not use every stupid thing shoved
> down their through.  And PLEASE tell me you write you C programming in
> adroind using your thumb prints.
>
> Ruben
>
> --
> http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff
> http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
>
> So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world  - RI Safir 1998
>
> http://fairuse.nylxs.com  DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
>
> "Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
>
> "The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we need the ability to participate in our own society."
>
> "> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be damned.<
> You must be a stupid engineer then, because politcs and technology have been attached at the hip since the 1st dynasty in Ancient Egypt.  I guess you missed that one."
>
> © Copyright for the Digital Millennium

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

[Jonathan Larmour]

[ gcc list CC dropped ]
On 24/11/12 17:58, Daniel Berlin wrote:
> In the "olden days", when html email was some shitty gobbledygook
> produced by an old version of exchange, this may have made sense.  In
> the days now of relatively sane multipart/alternative emails, it just
> seems like folks being annoyed that the rest of the world changed.

Personally I don't think it would be a problem accepting multipart/alternative
emails as long as they contain text/plain and as long as list users realise
that any careful formatting they have put in will be stripped. My experience
of what many MUAs do when generating text/plain alternatives from the HTML
master is that what results can be pretty dire, particularly when it comes to
insertion of arbitrary spacing. Posts with wacky spacing like that would
become more common, and no doubt some MUAs will be simply unable to generate
sane text/plain alternatives. But the burden of support for those people would
fall on the individual projects, so if individual projects are prepared to put
up with this, that should be up to them. Although as this thread has shown,
there is disagreement in the GCC community, so the SC would need to be the
ones to decide.

For the avoidance of doubt for those who may not know, assuming we are
switching to Mailman, it can already have its content filtering set up to
strip text/html from multipart mails (or remove everything except a defined
list of acceptable MIME types); and in addition it has its own HTML to text
munger which can be enabled on a per-list basis, although again the result may
not reflect the author's intention.

My main concerns only really apply if it involves letting HTML get passed
through, or go into the archives.

Jifl

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

[Diego Novillo]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 8:55 PM, Jonathan Larmour <jifl@jifvik.org> wrote:

> For the avoidance of doubt for those who may not know, assuming we are
> switching to Mailman, it can already have its content filtering set up to
> strip text/html from multipart mails (or remove everything except a defined
> list of acceptable MIME types); and in addition it has its own HTML to text
> munger which can be enabled on a per-list basis, although again the result may
> not reflect the author's intention.

I would be OK with this.  What I am really trying to avoid is the
rejection of "valid" messages.  If stripping the html part is doable,
that may be enough.


Thanks.  Diego.

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

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 11:13 AM, Ian Lance Taylor <ian@airs.com> wrote:

> 2) The fact that Android refuses to provide a non-HTML e-mail capability
> is ridiculous but does not seem to me to be a reason for us to change
> our policy.

Amen.

Rich texts in technical conversations where people people use
various mail agents and mail readers/senders is a fracking mess.

That the designers at infinite loop and amphitheatre parkway won't
let their devices and software send plain text emails is is the problem,
 not the solution.  It is not a software progress in the 21st
century; it is a regression.

-- Gaby

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

[Robert Dewar]

For me the most annoying thing about HTML burdened emails
is idiots who choose totally inappropriate fonts, that make
their stuff really hard to read. I choose a font for plain
text emails that is just right on my screen etc. I do NOT
want it overridden. And as for people who use color etc,
well others have said enough there .

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

[Jonathan Larmour]

On 23/11/12 19:53, Diego Novillo 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?

IMHO, there are some good reasons not to allow them now, some technical,
some more political.

There was a thread on this back in March too. Here were some of my
responses, for what it's worth:

http://sourceware.org/ml/overseers/2012-q1/msg00070.html

http://sourceware.org/ml/overseers/2012-q1/msg00088.html

Some of those could be resolved after the hardware upgrade (although I
don't know the current status on that), where the current proposal
involves a switch to Mailman. But that wouldn't solve all the issues.

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".

Jifl
-- 
--["No sense being pessimistic, it wouldn't work anyway"]-- Opinions==mine

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

[Diego Novillo]

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.

Diego.

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

[Paolo Carlini]

> 
> 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.

Seconded.

Paolo

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

[Per Bothner]

On 11/23/2012 01:18 PM, 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.

Most development communities I'm familiar with seem to use plain text,
at least primarily.  But that is possibly because most developers
send plain text email by default.  I don't know if the mailing lists
actually prohibit html mail or just the culture discourages it.

Some lists may allow mail with text *and* html alternatives, and
just drop the text, at least for archives.  I don't know.

Any examples of an actual Free Software mailing list, hosted using
Free Software, that allows (and archives) HTML mail?  I looked at
the Gmane archives of some gimp lists, figuring they'd more like to
have graphics and/or HTML.  I didn't find images (perhaps for security
reasons), but I see some messages in the archines use a fixed font,
and some don't, so I conclude Gmane and those lists do support
HTML email.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/

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

[Corinna Vinschen]

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

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

[Daniel Berlin]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 5:08 AM, Corinna Vinschen <vinschen@redhat.com> wrote:
> 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.

It is almost trivial to get mutt to support html email.

http://jasonwryan.com/blog/2012/05/12/mutt/

>
> 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

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

[Daniel Berlin]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:48 PM, Daniel Berlin <dberlin@dberlin.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 5:08 AM, Corinna Vinschen <vinschen@redhat.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> It is almost trivial to get mutt to support html email.
>
> http://jasonwryan.com/blog/2012/05/12/mutt/
>
Also note that the vast majority of these email senders are sending
multipart/alternative, making the whole thing a mostly red-herring.
We just happen to reject multipart/alternative even if it contains
text/plain and text/html, just because it contains text/html.