[Openib-windows] Plain text and HTML mail format

[Fab Tillier]

> From: Tzachi Dar [mailto:tzachid at mellanox.co.il]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2005 3:03 PM
> 
> Bellow are answers and explanations to the points that you have raised. I do
> agree that there are some point in what you are saying (for example the size
> issue), but I still think that since the HTML is a super set of ASCII anything
> that one can do in html, can be done using HTML (but not vice versa). I also
> admit that at least in some places, I didn't under stand you, and I wrote what
> my thoughts were.

My main problem with HTML format is that when I add text in normal quoting style
(where I respond below what you wrote), the silly little line on the left of the
screen doesn't break, and I haven't found a way to make it break - I can make it
go away all together, but that's not what I want.  It's much faster to edit
incoming messages, convert them to plain text, and then reply and get the '>'
quoting of plain text (like I did with this one).  However, doing so looses all
previous HTML quoting history (which is accomplished without using ASCII) but
that's not my problem.  A reply to this email won't allow me to figure out who
wrote what, and I'd have to go back over the message history to figure it out.
That's too time consuming, and I'll just hit the delete key and move on.

Note that now that I changed the formatting style of the message to plain text,
all information about quoting has been completely lost.  The message below
provides no distinction between what anyone wrote, nor does it provide any
temporal information (who wrote what in what order).  This is something that
using the '>' prefix prevents, no matter what email format people use.  By using
HTML and relying on fonts and colors and fancy borders, you are forcing me to
use HTML too if I want to preserve that information and that's the problem.  I'd
rather not loose that information, but it's faster than trying to figure out how
to get the HTML to do what I want it to.  HTML email format makes email threads
worthless if those threads are more than a few emails long.  So whatever format
you use, make sure you use some ASCII character to indicate quoting order and
author so that conversion to plain text doesn't lose the information.

More below...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fab Tillier [mailto:ftillier at silverstorm.com]
> Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 8:50 PM
> To: 'Tzachi Dar'; openib-windows at openib.org
> Subject: RE: [Openib-windows] Plain text and HTML mail format
> 
> Here is what happens when someone uses HTML format.  See the line along the
> left of the quoted message?  It doesn't break when someone starts to write
> something, so in effect it does nothing - it's just a nuisance.  Which is why
> color is so important - it makes up for the inherently bad quoting style
> provided by HTML email.  People usually give up and top post, which makes it
> harder to follow a thread.
> 
> The fact that the line does not break is not a problem with html, it is a
> problem with outlook. If you use other clients for example Thunderbird, you
> will be happy to know that this problem is solved: the line does break. Still,
> if you want to get the >>> signs Thunderbird can also do this, so I guess that
> this is not a real issue. More than this, if you work with Thunderbird you
> will see that the HTML formats allow you to understand who is writing what,
> but still resize the lines. In some magic way the editor still understands
> that this is a paragraph.

While email clients *can* be configured to quote properly, the *users* don't
bother, and this makes their emails difficult to deal with.  I don't have a
problem with sending emails.  I have a problem with receiving them.  I have
better things to do with my time than try to find an email client that handles
HTML well.  Even if I did, it doesn't mean others that send me email will do the
same.  Heck, if it's this hard to get people to send mail in plain text, how
hard do you think it will be to get people to just change how they format their
HTML emails?

Do you really want to make your messages more difficult to respond to?

> Color doesn't make text easier to read.
> Fonts don't make text easier to read, either
> 
> 
> Fonts and colors are tools that like any other tool can be used for better or
> for worse. Not any document with color and fonts will look well, but most of
> them will (if you think about it long enough).
> Here are some examples of companies and organization that gave this a thought
> and decided to use fonts and colors. Take a look, and I'm sure that you will
> agree that things look better this way:
> www.cnn.com, www.intel.com, http://www.silverstorm.com/ and there are probably
> 50 million or more. I wander how many people are still using gopher (you
> probably remember the good old gopher, that only used ASCII).

Web sites are done in HTML because they are marketing tools, and marketing needs
things to be flashy and pretty.  For the technical discussions we have here,
it's the content that matters.  The fonts and color are totally superfluous to
the goal of the communication.

> There's also a size issue - if you look at the message you sent, and compare
> the size between the HTML format you sent and a plain text format, you will
> see that the HTML is 10K while the plain text is 6K.  That's a considerable
> difference.  You can try this yourself to verify this - make a copy of the
> sent message, then open the copy, select <Edit><Edit Message>, then
> <Format><Plain Text>.  Now save the message and compare the size to the
> original.
> 
> I agree with this point, but do you really think that this is an issue?
> One more point to remember here is the old saying that one drawing is equal to
> a thousands words. I'm adding here a small graph, that I frankly believe that
> we all agree that writing it in plain text will be longer (in kbytes). I also
> believe that understanding the text will take longer.

If a diagram is needed, it can be sent as an attachment.  Plain text doesn't
prevent that.  Message size does matter when you're connected to the world via a
900kbps DSL line.  We are at the limit of the building infrastructure, so we
can't go any faster.

> When sending patches inline, it's easier if they aren't in some fancy font -
> plain text lets code look like code.  It also lets the recipient save the
> message and apply the patch without needing an attachment.
>  Two issues are raised here: The first is this I don't really think that it
> really maters if you save the message and apply it as a patch or you save the
> attachment and apply it. I didn't count the clicks needed but it looks the
> same to me.
> The other issue and this is where I probably missed you all together is about
> code looking like code. I have looked at the patches that you have sent in
> plain text and all I saw was code in one font and one color (black). This
> looked exactly like the text and to me it didn't look like code at all. The
> reason that I'm saying that it doesn't look like code is probably because I
> use source insight as my editor, and there code is being displayed in colors
> and with fonts. So I went and looked around for a while, other people are
> using Visual Slick, and this editor is using colors and fonts. I continued my
> search, and went to some open source tools such as eclipse, kdevelop and
> kscope, and surprise they were using colors and fonts. Next I thought about
> the good old vi (there code will look like code). Unfortunately, the new
> versions of vi (vim) are also using colors (but no fonts).
> So finally I have asked a Linux guru to show me how code looks like (and we
> are talking real code here - Linux kernel). His answer was immediate: go to
> http://lxr.linux.no/blurb.html I went there and boom: colors and fonts.
> So can you please tell me how should code look like? (By the way if my feeling
> was right, and you think that code should look with one font and one color -
> well html can do exactly this).

Yes, editors have color support.  I haven't seen much use for varying the font
within source.  I personally prefer fixed width fonts, as it makes it easier to
format the code to look reasonable.  The great thing with plain text emails is I
can set my email client to use courier when displaying, and you can set yours to
your font of choice.  You don't have to see what font I used, and I don't have
to see what font you used, and that's the way I'd prefer it.

> 
> So plain text:
> - is easier to read (for English, which is the primary language on the openib-
> windows list)
> - is smaller to send and receive over the network
> - is harder to make careless mistakes like embedding multi-megabyte bitmaps,
> tables, graphs and whatnot
> - lets code look like code
> - lets messages be used as patches without attachments
> - provides better quoting style for putting inline responses
> 
> 
>  So do you still that all above is true? Or should I send some more examples ?

I don't care about the examples.  I don't think I can force you (or anyone) to
send mails in plain text.  The fact that you can send plain text as HTML and not
loose any information but can't do the opposite highlights the weakness of the
HTML mail format everyone seems to use.  By using HTML, you are taking away from
my ability to choose the mail format that I prefer.