I vote for blocking HTML mails, but not the sender. :)

Also, whats this talk about "geeks"? Lets treat each other as human beings, and not resort to stereotyping one another. It is one thing that the world perceives FLOSS enthusiasts as "geeks" and "fanatics", but lets not start that amongst ourselves now.

Clinton Goveas http://www.clintongoveas.com

------- Open Source Knowledge Base - http://os.clintongoveas.com Securely Distribute Your e-Products - http://ods.clintongoveas.com

Clinton Goveas writes:

Next LUG meet: 11 Oct 2003 around 4 pm - VJTI Mech Dept

I vote for blocking HTML mails, but not the sender. :)

Also, whats this talk about "geeks"? Lets treat each other as human beings, and not resort to stereotyping one another. It is one thing that the world perceives FLOSS enthusiasts as "geeks" and "fanatics", but lets not start that amongst ourselves now.

Clinton Goveas http://www.clintongoveas.com

I don't know why we always get into this "Geeks Vs Rest of the World" scenario on this list. Agreed totally that HTML mail is a pain to read. But then newbies who come from the Webmail and Windoze world need to be educated rather than be kicked off. I agree with Mitul and Clinton here we should desist from classifying people here.

We can have some kind of a warning mail sent to the person who sends the email in HTML and politely ask him to resend the mail in Plain Text. This mail could include a link which tells why it is better to send mail in HTML. Also I would request the List Admins to send out a mail reminder with the list guidelines once a month. With the number of mail sent on this list per month, I don't think it will add to the traffic but rather increase the relevance of posts on this list. This will go a long way in keeping the atmosphere on this list healthy.

Vinayak Hegde

On 28/09/03 21:19 +0530, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote:

Its now time for you all to get out of the text only mode and move over to GUI. The entire world has moved and ILUG is still stuck there. The

Why? The GUI needs me to move away from the keyboard. For a text system, a GUI is a disadvantage. My mail client is powerful, it works for me, and I just don't see any other client coming close to what I get with mutt.

difference in size between text and html mail is small. Dont see in %

Some people pay by the byte. And I see no reason to pay for useless content.

Devdas Bhagat

On Tuesday 30 September 2003 12:01, Nikhil bhaskaran wrote:

Next LUG meet: 11 Oct 2003 around 4 pm - VJTI Mech Dept

hii,

----chop----

After all a forum like this relies heavily on the manners of the its users . Allowing html doesn't mean you are inviting all sort of junk into this forum , junk can be, if required , posted in text form too .

You missed the point. Atleast 33% of your html mail will be junk - presuming that the rest has information. While most members are well behaved, it's clueless newbies who are problematic. Most never bother to read the list guidelines and then take offence to reprimands. The oldies who were newbies in the bad old days AFAIR never posted html.

Every newbie on this forum and every other person who is into marketing like me , I am sure must have supported html mails.

Not at all. Would you drop a customer who does not support html? Nobody seems to have dropped me. Most organisations who sell me stuff whine a little but then send in plain text. And more important do organisations whine if mails are not in html? not at all. So why add to the noise with html.

this argument finds a friend in the dos/windows which the better fight ?? when I started using computers , dos was around , and I loved the o/s . I really did, more so because I had near mastery over the software , then came in windows and it changed the way the world of common users (not geeks) looked at computers , many people cursed windows so much for the extra space it takes ( similar to argument put here by some one about extra space that html mails take ) and its crashes . Though dos was great since it hardly crashed and hard so little requirements but a life without windows cannot be imagined. ,I know this is a Linux forum but I am still a newbie with Linux so bear the dos/windows example.

Ahh welcome to reality. It was availablity of "low cost" hardware that changed the way people used computers. Windoze in it's various abominations is what killed wide spread AND effecient use. Check out the percentage of the earths population that uses computers - quite insignificant. Even in advanced economies there is a wide digital divide. and there is constant noise about low cost computing. Yet we conitinue to grossly abuse and consume precious resources without a thought. Wake up man.

---snip---

again not swaying too much for the original argument , open up GROUP , be open to new things , never resist change , new technologies come with their own set of problems , but then we work our way around it and that's how technology moves ahead.

Thoughtless and brain dead use of technologies like html in emails is what causes problems, and the techies have to spend resources correcting the idiocity - in this case Philip (or somone else) will spend time writing scripts to clear up other people's mess.

create barriers for new technology , Break the barriers let html in and if users don't use them responsibly , warn them once twice and if found incorrigible ban them .

that is ok.

let both text and html co- exist !!

Heck!! noway

rgds jtdsouza

On Sunday 28 September 2003 21:19, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote:

Next LUG meet: 11 Oct 2003 around 4 pm - VJTI Mech Dept

Its now time for you all to get out of the text only mode and move over to GUI. The entire world has moved and ILUG is still stuck

GUIs are like pesticides - temporary gains and permanent damage. And everybody pays for cleaning up.

there. The difference in size between text and html mail is small. Dont see in % terms, see in absolute. The total volume of mails on the list is not enough to make a major difference in download time even on a 33.6 modem.

I dont think that the internet (or ip communications ) is restricted only to this list. If you take the Signal to noise ratio of plain text to html, html is unneccessarily cluttering all communication channels. Lets do our bit and nip the noise from mails. Wether filtering it is easy or not is besides the point: 1) once it leaves your box it has added approx. 33% noise 2) Dont see why polluters should noy be penalised 3) Dont see why public resource (computing power storage space etc.) should be wasted on characters who dont care (as one of the posters said)

The only problem would be if someone puts in heavy graphics as a background for the mail page. I havent seen anyone on the group making a mistake on that.

Wait a little and we will have another long list of rants and args along these same lines - Subject: should we allow personal logos, sig tunes and jingles in mails. Come to think of it that might be fun.

rgds jtdsouza@softhome.net

On Tue, 30 Sep 2003, Homyar Bhathena wrote:

No, I feel that html messaging should be allowed as that's the current standard for sending mails.

Could you send us a link to this standards document?

If mailman could take the html messages and send them as an attachment.

This more than doubles the size of the message.

The question that still remains is what does one gain by sending html mail and does it outweigh the costs of html mail?

We have 740 members on this list. For every 3kB mail sent to the list (yours was 4kB), 2.2MB of mails are sent out from the list server. This doesn't just clog our link, it contributes to the clogging of all links everywhere. Doesn't anyone care about that?

This vote is declared closed. All suggestions have been considered, results will be posted in a separate mail.

Philip

On Sat, Sep 27, 2003 at 06:03:21AM +0530, Devdas Bhagat wrote:

Next LUG meet: 11 Oct 2003 around 4 pm - VJTI Mech Dept

On 26/09/03 18:44 -0000, Raseel Bhagat wrote:

...

Hi, I'm Raseel. I'm a new member. I don't see why html mails should not be allowed. I hardly thing there will be anyone who is SO new that he won't know hpow to handle the html mails.

But what about those of us who prefer clients which don't handle HTML email? The only HTML mail I get is spam. Quite a few of us find text based interfaces much more powerful than web based interfaces, and we don't want HTML, which bloats the size of the mail while conveying no additional relevant information. It also gives a chance for web bugs, tracking points, malicious scripts, etc to come through (I am aware that not all people on this list use Linux as their desktop OS).

Why text mail? Because every email client knows how to handle it. PERIOD.

Why deny html mail?

It is *expensive*, and those clients that dont support HTML by default mail are prohibited from reading our mails seamlessly. Since we should go for a standard encoding so that all clients support it is a good policy to say we accept posts only in PLAIN TEXT.

Since the next acceptable standard encoding is HTML, we accept it a few number of times by sending a warning, and then block them if the user doesnt care for the community.

It is a good practice to encode in text. If one wants to be more *expressive* using plain text use again the most commonly used methods of being expressive, eg. LOUD, <warning> warn </warning>. Again by using plain text encoding.

Nagarjuna

Philip the better idea wud have been to have a message board / poll setup on the site. You have again started another thread of debate which has no end.