Off Topic: Confirmed fix for your messages being in an attachment
In your address book for entry VCF-Midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org, set the drop down: "Prefers to receive messages formatted as: Plain Text" If Mailman ever allows HTML, we can switch back.
On 6/30/21 5:55 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
In your address book for entry VCF-Midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org, set the drop down: "Prefers to receive messages formatted as: Plain Text"
If Mailman ever allows HTML, we can switch back.
Uh, no, please don't. HTML mail sucks. Leave HTML in web pages where it belongs. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
But we can have bold, italic and fonts! Woo hoo! Anything us folks write in HTML won't be worth your time anyway. :-) On 6/30/2021 6:04 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 6/30/21 5:55 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
In your address book for entry VCF-Midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org, set the drop down: "Prefers to receive messages formatted as: Plain Text"
If Mailman ever allows HTML, we can switch back.
Uh, no, please don't. HTML mail sucks. Leave HTML in web pages where it belongs.
-Dave
On 6/30/2021 6:04 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 6/30/21 5:55 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
In your address book for entry VCF-Midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org, set the drop down: "Prefers to receive messages formatted as: Plain Text"
If Mailman ever allows HTML, we can switch back.
Uh, no, please don't. HTML mail sucks. Leave HTML in web pages where it belongs.
I guess that cinches it then, lets send in plain text for mailman.
-Dave
On Wed, 30 Jun 2021, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 6/30/21 5:55 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
In your address book for entry VCF-Midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org, set the drop down: "Prefers to receive messages formatted as: Plain Text"
If Mailman ever allows HTML, we can switch back.
Uh, no, please don't. HTML mail sucks. Leave HTML in web pages where it belongs.
I second the motion. Email doesn't need HTML. Mike Loewen mloewen@cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/
Hello! To quote an old friend, "I'm with you!", actually Dave, and Mike, I do agree. I've been fighting against that appalling stuff on the Hercules lists for years, oddly enough it seemingly it got agreed to when we left for the Groups IO hangout. Of course, Dave as it happens your help won't need to go over this thread with you. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." On Wed, Jun 30, 2021 at 9:41 PM Mike Loewen via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Wed, 30 Jun 2021, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 6/30/21 5:55 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
In your address book for entry VCF-Midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org, set the drop down: "Prefers to receive messages formatted as: Plain Text"
If Mailman ever allows HTML, we can switch back.
Uh, no, please don't. HTML mail sucks. Leave HTML in web pages where it belongs.
I second the motion. Email doesn't need HTML.
Mike Loewen mloewen@cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/
"I can hear my hair curling!", said the Fourth Doctor "What does that mean?", said the Gallifreyan individual, "It means either I'm getting an idea, or it's going to rain.", responded the Fourth Doctor.
From the "Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin"
I only recommended it so that theoretically it would end the attachment generation that plagues about half of messages sent on this list.. not that we would start sending flowery HTML stuff. I guess that's the problem with HTML for ya'll? It encourages too much formatting? Or is it bulky? I don't need it, certainly we don't need it functionally, but I don't understand what the huge prob is with it, educate me. In the mean time, I've changed my setting to plain text, I figure most will follow suit. On 6/30/2021 6:04 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 6/30/21 5:55 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
In your address book for entry VCF-Midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org, set the drop down: "Prefers to receive messages formatted as: Plain Text"
If Mailman ever allows HTML, we can switch back.
Uh, no, please don't. HTML mail sucks. Leave HTML in web pages where it belongs.
-Dave
On 6/30/21 11:40 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I only recommended it so that theoretically it would end the attachment generation that plagues about half of messages sent on this list.. not that we would start sending flowery HTML stuff. I guess that's the problem with HTML for ya'll? It encourages too much formatting? Or is it bulky? I don't need it, certainly we don't need it functionally, but I don't understand what the huge prob is with it, educate me.
There are philosophical issues with sending frequently tens or hundreds of kilobytes when a few hundred bytes will do. That doesn't matter as much as it used to, but it still matters to some people for real (i.e. financial) reasons. There ARE still metered network connections. I myself am not on one, but I know a great many people who are, and smartphones nearly always are. Next, HTML is for web pages. Email is not web pages, it is a textual communications medium. The fact that uneducated developers who don't know any better added HTML capability in some email clients does not automatically mean it's a good idea. At least in Thunderbird (which I use) that drivel can be turned off. All of this crap started when the floodgates of nontechnical people opened up onto the Internet, and they seemed to think that anything is really just fine as long as they found it in a drop-down menu. Otherwise, why would it be there, right? That fallacious logic assumes that the developers of the email program knew what they were doing. But most importantly for me, *I* choose the text size, text color, background color, etc that works best FOR ME to read email on all of the devices on which I do that. People are not welcome to attempt to override that. What they send is really their business...and whether or not I bit-bucket their flowery purple fonts is mine. That crap is distracting and it's a waste of time, and I'm not a person with a lot of time to waste. Next, honestly, who has so much free time as to think playing around with "stylizing" their textual communications is a reasonable use of their time?
In the mean time, I've changed my setting to plain text, I figure most will follow suit.
Hopefully. Ok, off my high horse, I'm getting back to firmware now. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 7/1/2021 12:04 AM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 6/30/21 11:40 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I only recommended it so that theoretically it would end the attachment generation that plagues about half of messages sent on this list.. not that we would start sending flowery HTML stuff. I guess that's the problem with HTML for ya'll? It encourages too much formatting? Or is it bulky? I don't need it, certainly we don't need it functionally, but I don't understand what the huge prob is with it, educate me.
There are philosophical issues with sending frequently tens or hundreds of kilobytes when a few hundred bytes will do. That doesn't matter as much as it used to, but it still matters to some people for real (i.e. financial) reasons. There ARE still metered network connections. I myself am not on one, but I know a great many people who are, and smartphones nearly always are.
Next, HTML is for web pages. Email is not web pages, it is a textual communications medium. The fact that uneducated developers who don't know any better added HTML capability in some email clients does not automatically mean it's a good idea. At least in Thunderbird (which I use) that drivel can be turned off. All of this crap started when the floodgates of nontechnical people opened up onto the Internet, and they seemed to think that anything is really just fine as long as they found it in a drop-down menu. Otherwise, why would it be there, right? That fallacious logic assumes that the developers of the email program knew what they were doing.
But most importantly for me, *I* choose the text size, text color, background color, etc that works best FOR ME to read email on all of the devices on which I do that. People are not welcome to attempt to override that. What they send is really their business...and whether or not I bit-bucket their flowery purple fonts is mine. That crap is distracting and it's a waste of time, and I'm not a person with a lot of time to waste.
Next, honestly, who has so much free time as to think playing around with "stylizing" their textual communications is a reasonable use of their time?
In the mean time, I've changed my setting to plain text, I figure most will follow suit.
Hopefully.
Ok, off my high horse, I'm getting back to firmware now.
-Dave
OK, merits of HTML in email or mail messaging facilities can discussed in another thread if anyone is interested. Thanks for the explanation. But HTML formatting wasn't my intent anyway in my suggestion that HTML be handled by mailman. Ya'll assumed that. My goal was to eliminate the attachments which we NOW know are created by emails send in HTML *mode* . I imagine that no one has enjoyed frequently opening a message only to find that you have to open another message to see what the poster had to say. Has this not been a colossal waste of everyones time? Worse I just learned today (and this was the LAST STRAW) that every message that everyone has sent in HTML *mode*, where the text body became an attachment, has been lost in history because the mailman digest strip these attachments off. Its all gone. Years and years of messages. All due to misunderstanding of this facility. My suggestion that mailman be changed to allow HTML had to do with ACCEPTING it and not creating an attachment. Not to encourage people to bring web formatting to our communications. What might this mean? It might mean reasonably stripping the plain text from the HTML transmission and putting it in the body. Doesn't seem like too much to ask. But I realize our admins don't necessarily have time to make this happen. So, I tried a workaround and had success. Only it requires senders to change the mode of their transmissions to mailman, to send in plain text *MODE* only. Slight problem is that we have apprise new people to change their settings for mailman. If mailman could just allow HTML and just convert, so much the better.
Doug, I got what you were saying. You neither said nor implied that you wanted HTML email to “liven up the emails” or to add additional formatting. It was clearly to avoid what is most certainly an annoying circumstance with all the mime attachments and a detrimental one with the loss of data as you mentioned (something I was not aware of as I have not gone back to look at emails other than those saved in my own inbox or folders I use to organize archived emails) Tony Sent from my iPhone
On Jul 1, 2021, at 3:39 AM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On 7/1/2021 12:04 AM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 6/30/21 11:40 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote: I only recommended it so that theoretically it would end the attachment generation that plagues about half of messages sent on this list.. not that we would start sending flowery HTML stuff. I guess that's the problem with HTML for ya'll? It encourages too much formatting? Or is it bulky? I don't need it, certainly we don't need it functionally, but I don't understand what the huge prob is with it, educate me. There are philosophical issues with sending frequently tens or hundreds of kilobytes when a few hundred bytes will do. That doesn't matter as much as it used to, but it still matters to some people for real (i.e. financial) reasons. There ARE still metered network connections. I myself am not on one, but I know a great many people who are, and smartphones nearly always are. Next, HTML is for web pages. Email is not web pages, it is a textual communications medium. The fact that uneducated developers who don't know any better added HTML capability in some email clients does not automatically mean it's a good idea. At least in Thunderbird (which I use) that drivel can be turned off. All of this crap started when the floodgates of nontechnical people opened up onto the Internet, and they seemed to think that anything is really just fine as long as they found it in a drop-down menu. Otherwise, why would it be there, right? That fallacious logic assumes that the developers of the email program knew what they were doing. But most importantly for me, *I* choose the text size, text color, background color, etc that works best FOR ME to read email on all of the devices on which I do that. People are not welcome to attempt to override that. What they send is really their business...and whether or not I bit-bucket their flowery purple fonts is mine. That crap is distracting and it's a waste of time, and I'm not a person with a lot of time to waste. Next, honestly, who has so much free time as to think playing around with "stylizing" their textual communications is a reasonable use of their time?
In the mean time, I've changed my setting to plain text, I figure most will follow suit. Hopefully. Ok, off my high horse, I'm getting back to firmware now. -Dave
OK, merits of HTML in email or mail messaging facilities can discussed in another thread if anyone is interested. Thanks for the explanation.
But HTML formatting wasn't my intent anyway in my suggestion that HTML be handled by mailman. Ya'll assumed that. My goal was to eliminate the attachments which we NOW know are created by emails send in HTML *mode* . I imagine that no one has enjoyed frequently opening a message only to find that you have to open another message to see what the poster had to say. Has this not been a colossal waste of everyones time?
Worse I just learned today (and this was the LAST STRAW) that every message that everyone has sent in HTML *mode*, where the text body became an attachment, has been lost in history because the mailman digest strip these attachments off. Its all gone. Years and years of messages. All due to misunderstanding of this facility.
My suggestion that mailman be changed to allow HTML had to do with ACCEPTING it and not creating an attachment. Not to encourage people to bring web formatting to our communications. What might this mean? It might mean reasonably stripping the plain text from the HTML transmission and putting it in the body. Doesn't seem like too much to ask. But I realize our admins don't necessarily have time to make this happen.
So, I tried a workaround and had success. Only it requires senders to change the mode of their transmissions to mailman, to send in plain text *MODE* only. Slight problem is that we have apprise new people to change their settings for mailman. If mailman could just allow HTML and just convert, so much the better.
On Jul 1, 2021, at 05:58, Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Doug, I got what you were saying. You neither said nor implied that you wanted HTML email to “liven up the emails” or to add additional formatting. It was clearly to avoid what is most certainly an annoying circumstance with all the mime attachments and a detrimental one with the loss of data as you mentioned (something I was not aware of as I have not gone back to look at emails other than those saved in my own inbox or folders I use to organize archived emails)
I think there are a lot of subjective reasons for/against formatted email (I’m ok with it in a lot of contexts), but my biggest beef especially when it comes to mailing lists is that email (as in the RFC822 format) is really built for plain text. There are a lot of hacks built around it to enable inclusion of formatting, but they aren’t universally adopted or supported everywhere. Unsurprisingly, it tends to be older Microsoft decisions that break things the worst (including the entire email as a series of MIME attachments just seems passive-aggressive at best). Think of it like TV. When color TV debuted, they made it work in a fully backwards-compatible way with older sets by sticking the color information in a corner of the frequency spectrum where the old sets wouldn’t really even notice it, let alone display visible artifacts. They *could* have done something similar to this with email, though the analogy falls apart (color information in TV is about 1/4 the bandwidth of the brightness, whereas formatting has the potential to be several times the actual text in some cases), but they chose to not choose and Let The Market Work It Out, and here we are today. Anyway. On many mailing lists on these here internets, you’ll make a lot more friends by making sure your email client can send plain text properly, not least because a lot of mailing list software just doesn’t handle all the weird varieties of HTML emails properly when it forwards them. - Dave
On 6/30/21 17:55, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
In your address book for entry VCF-Midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org, set the drop down: "Prefers to receive messages formatted as: Plain Text"
If Mailman ever allows HTML, we can switch back.
OK made the change. Mark
participants (7)
-
Dave McGuire -
David Riley -
Douglas Crawford -
Gregg Levine -
madodel -
Mike Loewen -
Tony Bogan