NOT OT: re plain text vs HTML

[Ed]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 10:31 AM, Dazed_75 <lthielster at gmail.com> wrote:
> Technomage wrote:
>>There are, in fact, a few of us (like me) who use text only readers for
>>various reasons (such as visual impairment) and html formatted messages
>>are definitely the bane of out existence.
>>
>>its been proper etiquette on the internet since its inception that mail
>>usually is plain text and if you wish to send media (pictures, etc) that
>>its attached (in mime printable form). this may seem archaic, but it
>>generally works out well for most of us.
>>
>>now my client here can read html formatted messages, but the speech
>>device will not read me the output, instead it will read the underlying
>>source of the text (which gets noisy, frustrating, and tends to have me
>>filter such without even reading it)
>>
>>I, for one, have a problem with such mails and tend to filter them into
>>the junk box. if anything important gets in there, its gone (if its
>>really important, the sender will have sent as plain text with an html
>>attachment <preferred>. this way, I can still read it and those with
>>extra features can use the html to their own contentment).
>>
>>sorry of I may seem a bit terse toward those using html formatted text
>>messages, but you folks should be aware there are almost 30 million
>>others like me and we would rather not have our lives made any harder
>>than it already is.
>
> Finally a good reason to use plain text as opposed to reasons to avoid
> HTML.  I confess this had not occurred to me.  I would have think that
> modern text readers would read HTML embedded text without source tags
> etc. even had I thought about it.  If there are not, there certainly
> need to be.  Sounds like an opportunity for someone.
>
> I use gmail for this list and a few other things.  gmail really has no
> formatting means for plain text which is one reason to prefer the
> "Rich formatting" option.  To even include technomages comment as
> "quoted" I had to manually insert the symbols on each line.  Other
> email clients offer more formatting tools for plain text.  Sounds like
> a suggestion to send to google.
>
> For most email I use Thunderbird.  Thunderbird has an option that says
> "When sending messages in HTML and one or more recipients are not
> listed as being able to receive HTML:"
> - Ask me what to do
> - Convert the message to plain text
> - Send the message in HTML anyway
> - Send the message in both plain text and HTML
>
> I think the last option is the default, but all I know for sure is
> that is what mine is set to.  I never checked whether that means it
> sends both to all recipients or separate sends for plain text
> recipients.  Would that email had something similar.
>
> **** Technomage, do you know if your reader works right for a message
> that Thunderbird sends with that 4th option?
>
> The Tbird address book allows you to specify for each recipient what
> format they prefer.  I notice also that the send options in
> Thunderbird allow format selection based on the destination domain.
> Mine shows a number of domains under HTML, but none under Plain Text

Mimedefang is useful for fixing this problem at the SMTP server level.
It works as a miter for Sendmail as well as Postfix.
the URL is http://www.mimedefang.org/

I don't know if it can do anything for ASCII art  ;)

Ed