From: Kee Hinckley <nazgul(_at_)somewhere(_dot_)com>
<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
image tags should be
counted because the user presumably wanted
Well, then as a start we can probably consider the 34% of the
email which was multipart/mixed as user-requested.
That would be wrong, because we're talking about HTML formating.
<div>But actually, even that isn't a good test. IncrediMail
includes an ad logo with every message. But then, from what I
can tell--most of their users signed up specifically because they
*did* want formatting. You can have mood email, images based on
the date, background email wallpaper and lots of other fun
stuff.</div>
The formating they ask for should be counted, but not the logo.
...
<blockquote type="cite" cite>If HTML formating is so valuable, valued
and nearly universal used,<br>
why haven't we seen much of it in this mailing list? Why
wasn't</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>that text you quoted of mine in green
italics or something?</blockquote>
<div>Because technical mailing lists are run by techies, and we have
actively (even on this list, if I recall correctly) berated people who
used excessive formatting. The non-technical lists I'm on
getting formatted email all the time--even when the list software
filters it out. I'd estimate that about 50% of the messages I
get on one non-technical email list have a message from Yahoo about
attachments having been filtered out.
We are talking about HTML formating instead of attachments, or at least
I am.
Besides your point about attachments already being filtered cuts against
your position.
People set background
wallpaper for their email! Customizing fonts and colors is
something end-users do every day in their word processor. They
have no idea why they shouldn't do it in their email. Do they
*need* to? No, of course not. Do they want to?
Obviously.
Of course some people do. My claim is that they are rare. Your
claim seems to be that most or at large minority do that sort of stuff.
...
And does a non-techie know why I just put "*"'s around
the "need" in the previous paragraph? Maybe.
Would they do it? No, of course not, they'd just hit the<b>
bold</b> button.</div>
Your claim is that they do it. Mine is that they don't.
Instead of arguing about it, how about some numbers?
<div>I will make another attempt to determine how much of that email
has user-specified formatting. But it's very hard to quantify.
If they cut and paste a message (e.g. not forwarded) and it ends up
with the mail headers bolded--was that a user-decision (after all, the
system is only making sure the email looks just the same as it does in
the UI, and the receiving MUA won't do it) or gratuitous formatting?
Judging intention from formatting is not trivial.</div>
Your efforts will be appreciated.
<div>And of course, it's not clear it matters here.
HTML-blocking will not work. Microsoft isn't going get rid
of WYSIWYG in their email programs, and commercial mailers aren't
going to drop HTML as a format for their mailings. The whole
thing would just turn into another massive whitelisting problem.</div>
That's a red herring. No one has said that Microsoft should "get rid
of" their almost WYSIWYG stuff (I've worked in that area and have
opinions). I've proposed only turning off HTML by default or
not sending HTML unless the user explicitly asks for some formatting.
http://www.messagefire.com/ <span
</span> Anti-Spam Service for your POP Account<br>
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/ Writings on Technology
and Society<br>
<br>
I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to
accept<br>
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to
regulate<br>
everyone else's.</div>
As far as I can tell, all of the HTML formatting in your message
was gratuitious and not manually selected.
Note that a lot of it was incredibly bad but typical machine-generated
HTML. For example many of the non-breaking spaces are obnoxious (but
hidden) noise HTML. Or notice that <span></span> pair above.
But as far as I can tell, the fact that MUAs generate incredibly
bad HTML is irrelevant.
vjs
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