* Ghodmode wrote: >Is it a CSS-Discuss community policy, or the policy of an individual >who happens to be the list administrator? I suspect that it's based >on old practices for reasons that are no longer valid.
Noting that this kind of discussion, even of marked offtopic, is usually not particularily well-received on the list, I can suggest to consider what features of "HTML mails" you find essential to talk about practical use of cascading style sheets and how you would avoid imposing choices you find appropriate on others. For instance, you would not specify the font you like because it's likely not installed on other users' systems, or because they configured the font they prefer to read emails. You would not use images because they would make messages very big if they are specified inline or as attachments, or because they could be used for "tracking" if they are external. You would probably not change font sizes or colors because people tend to find that annoying and dis- tracting (you could use them well, but people usually don't). You could add that "HTML mail" editing interfaces are usually very poor and make it hard to properly encode, for instance, where you split a quote. The markup they tend to produce is often rather hideous. The point there is that if everyone excercises restraint in using "HTML mails", there isn't much left people could use it for to communite any better (as opposed to individualize the appearance of mails or whatever you may have in mind). On a technical level you create problems with spam filters as spam very often uses "HTML mail" for various reasons, and problems for the archive software as it would have to strip all sorts of markup for reasons of security. I would not read "HTML-only" mails because my client does not support them, and I've not seen them used sensibly virtually ever in e- mail discussions (though I see some benefits with "newsletters", in as much as "newsletters" are good use of e-mail as a medium). You can find arguments such as these in all sorts of articles on the subject on the web. In the odd event that you actually need some HTML feature to communicate better (say you gathered data about practical use of cascading style sheets and the best way to present it is in form of a table) and wish to tell the community about it, you always have the option to make a web page and post a link. And for the little things like emphasis there are *alternatives available* with plain text. So, no, this is not based on some individual's personal preference but rather on the experience with what works and what doesn't of many, and various issues that arise from "HTML mail" usage as they can be observed in practise. If you think you can make a convincing argument that "HTML mails", all things considered, are better, by all means write it up and post a link; if it is indeed convincing, things are likely to change. In any case, this isn't the right place to make such an argument as it is not specific to this particular list (you can make the same argument for any HTML or webdesign or related list). -- Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjo...@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de 25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/ ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [css-d@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
