On Thu, Jun 19, 2003 at 06:50:36PM -0500, gep2(_at_)terabites(_dot_)com wrote:
Programmers and sysadmins, and people who started using email before
MIME was introduced, tend to dislike HTML email. Other people see
the ability to use boldface and italics as normal features of any
text-editing environment (which they consider their MUA to be).
Even so, HTML is the wrong tool for the job. A better approach is the
text/enriched MIME Content-type described in RFC 1563 at
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1563.html
This provides all the formatting that someone composing a simple email
message is likely to require (and then some), but without the bloat
and security risks inherent in a full HTML rendering engine. It also
produces mail messages can be rendered well by text-based email
clients such as mutt, and which are still fairly legible even as raw
text due to the lack of " " strings which seem to make up the
bulk of many HTML email messages.
If you want FULL text-handling features, then you can send LaTeX or
Word (or whatever) documents as attachments (and thus enable
attachments) for those people you trust to send you that kind of material.
Exactly right. This is simply a matter of using the correct tool for
the job at hand.
Unfortunately, restricting email content type seems unlikely to have
any long-term impact on spam, as the spammers will simply adapt their
behavior to whatever content type is most likely to get their message
across.
--
John Kodis Goddard Space Flight Center
kodis(_at_)mail630(_dot_)gsfc(_dot_)nasa(_dot_)gov
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
Phone: 301-286-7376 Fax: 301-286-1771
_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
Asrg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg