Stroller wrote: > It's a bug because it annoys people. It only tends to annoy me when the > sender has set the text to a size which is unreadable or intrusive on my > monitor (a size which is undoubtedly perfect on the sender's 800x600 > monitor), but it appears to annoy other people more. That there's scope > for us to have this discussion demonstrates that it's simply better to > post plain-text to mailing lists. Mailers should default to plain text > unless the user explicitly chooses otherwise. > > Stroller. > Mailers should also default to useful column sizes, which seem to have failed in the case of your last message.
Many mailers do default to plain text, as it is all they handle, it is essentially for them that we use plain text vs html anyway, along with other reasons that are demonstrated at http://www.expita.com/nomime.html. On this list I am sure the reasons are more for text readers and the digests vs Microsoft vulnerabilities. Until a mailer can sense that is it subscribed to a mailing list, they will never default to plain text. Adding pretty markup and pictures or colors is considered an important feature to many people. I agree that it wouldn't hurt to put a link to a mailing list guide, or a few pointers in the welcome post, or on the mailing list webpage. If anything, to prevent users from getting as bent out of shape. As for the replies they get, they generally aren't rude. I would not say it's a piece of Gentoo "enculturation", as it is similar on most mailing lists. -Steve
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