Re: [Fsfe-uk] Administrivia: html duplicates

[Chris Croughton]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 05:05:55PM +0000, Sam Liddicott wrote:
> * Chris Croughton wrote, On 25/01/08 15:31:
> > On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 12:58:53PM +0000, Noah Slater wrote:
> >   
> >> On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 08:01:16AM +0100, Andrew Savory wrote:
> >>     
> >>> Perhaps, given it's 2008 and in the wider world outside our bubble
> >>> HTML has become commonplace, we might consider letting through HTML
> >>> emails? It might do us some good to see what regular folks do with
> >>> their emails.
> >>>       
> >> -1
> >>
> >> I use mutt over ssh and HTML is already enough of a problem for me, I
> >> for one welcome stripping at the mailing list stage.
> >
> > -1 for exactly the same reasons.
> >
> > I don't understand the bit about "It might do us some good to see what
> > regular folks do with their emails".  We could find out how many idiots
> > there are who can't configure their software correctly?  We could find
> > out how many people using FLOSS email clients can't handle HTML emails?
> >   
> I respect that argument.
> Just not very much, that's all.
> (with apologies for badly quoting the final phrase from the second BBC
> series of the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy).
> 
> It was hard to tell from what you said, if the /idiots/ as you put it to
> are those whose mail software isn't configured to handle MIME
> content-type multipart/alternative messages, or those whose software is
> configured to generate such messages.

I ws trying to work out what "It might do us some good to see what
regular folks do with their emails" might mean.  Who are these "regular
folks" (sounds like my doctor asking about bowel movements)?  Why are we
interested in what they do with their emails, probably from badly
configured versions of Outlook if my inbox is anything to go by?

> But seriously, are there really still techies using FLOSS email clients
> that can't handle HTML emails in some way, that can't be correctly
> configured to handle MIME content-type multipart/alternative?

Yes.  If I have to use one of my intermediate servers because my net
connection is down I have to use less(1) to read /var/spool/mail/* and
it looks very messy with HTML stuff in there.

> More than ten years ago RFC 2110 warned of such mailers:
> http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2110.txt
> 
>     Implementors are warned, however, that many
>        mail programs treat multipart/alternative as if it had been
>        multipart/mixed (even though MIME [MIME1] requires support for
>        multipart/alternative).

There probably still are.

> But isn't there are source code? Can't usable MIME compliance be added
> in 10 years? Lynx has been text-formatting html since 1992!

A lot of the so-called HTML I get in mail is broken, understandably only
by some proprietary systems.

> Sending out mutlipart/alternative is certainly quite appropriate if you
> are Cc'ing to people who might appreciate the extra mark-up, including
> /some/ screen-reader users.

What are they going to do about us who use plain text, if they need
extra markup?

> I personally don't mind if it is list policy to drop /offensive/
> alternative representations, but prefer the new current policy of
> permitting them.

I define HTML and anyhting else oversize as offensive.

> Noah, I'm puzzled, Mutt can deal with HTML parts just fine! I just
> download it to try it, it renders html in a lynx-type format.

Yes, mutt can cope with HTML if /etc/mailconf is set appropriately.  It
wasn't for me originally, for some reason it was set up to use less
instead (ah, it could be because Gentoo doesn't install lynx, only
links, I had to install lynx myself).

> However,
> http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/H/HI/HIGHTOWE/mime_strip.html_bodies.pl-1.6

The problem for me is that HTML parts make the messages a lot bigger.
And that things with HTML are more likely to be dumped as spam.

Chris C