Ben Bucksch wrote:
> > I was asked on this newsgroup (netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news)
> > last year to write about why plain text email should be the default
> > for email clients, rather than HTML.
>
> [I can't remember that, but it could well be true.]
Perhaps it was a private email from one of the Mozilla editor crew.
> Anyways, I don't know, who you are tring to convince or what you are
> trying to achieve. Plaintext is the default in Mozilla, after long
> fighting.
Wow!!! I didn't know this. I am really happy to hear this. My rant
is redundant. I apologise for sending it without first doing sufficient
research.
> > 1 - Plain text is simple and understandable - nothing could be
> > simpler. A character is a character. A newline is a newline.
>
> Sorry, but that's plain wrong. If you look behind the scenes, that's
> not at all the case.
I meant "understandable" to the user. People learn to read and write
and the placement of characters on paper is pretty well understood.
What they can't typically foresee is text being rendered in other fonts,
to different margins than they see on their screen, etc. So if the
indent a paragraph with spaces at the start of the lines they see, this
works fine in plain text and not with something more complex such as
HTML, unless of course the display system has identical right margins.
> > What you type is what you see and what the recipient receives.
>
> No. Apart from the above, the recipient might choose another font (I
> use a proportional one)
In that case I have no way of getting a message to you with nicely
indented numbered paragraphs or with text-based diagrams.
I think that proportional fonts have important aesthetic advantages -
courier would be sus in a high-fashion magazine (but mandatory in a
grunge fashion mag).
Proportional fonts probably pack more text into a given area for a
certain level of readability, but I think they have their own problems -
particularly on computer screens. I had an instance of this recently
when a test message from a no-doubt improperly configured mutt client
sent a bodgy email address [email protected]. That dot after the "@" is
clear as day in a fixed width font, but was hard to notice in the
proportoinal font used in the mailbox display of Netscape 4.x. In the
font used for the headers in the message display, it really is almost
invisible. It is only very marginally better under Mozilla. Two 'l's
can be tricky to read on screen and and two 'v's are often hard to
distinguish from 'w". "Modern" looks very much like "Modem" etc.
The only functional advantage proportional fonts bring over fixed is an
arguably greater density of characters per horizontal space. But I
think the benefit is marginal, and very often the text is so closely
packed on a computer screen that readability suffers.
I agree with you that in some circumstances HTML text which was written
with the expectation of an unknown right margin would display better on
a less than 80 character display.
> What is a proper system? Many plaintext messages get munged by broken
> mailers or MTAs.
I can't think of any, but they certainly would be broken!
> > provided sensible right margins are observed in the
> > original message.
>
> Quotes many times, no reasonable margin will protect from rewrapping
> quotes.
Pegasus mail had a natty feature for re-formatting a block of quoted
text
within a currently active right margin. Its tricky, but it can be
programmed - and it is probably a lot easier than the programming behind
graphic emoticons or those vertical bars in place of "> " quote
characters. That feature disappeared when Pegasus was adapted to try to
work with HTML.
> > 5 - The messages can be displayed with minimal fuss on mobile
> > devices and text consoles with no graphics capabilities and
> > small screen sizes.
>
> That's just so wrong.
In some cases, HTML text would be easier, I agree. But a character cell
display can't do bold-face or italics or different sizes or colours - so
if the message was written in HTML with the sender thinking that the
recipient would see all this, then there's no obvious way of conveying
it on the non-graphic display - or even the fact that the communicated
information is missing.
With plain text, you are relying purely on symbols which are carried
without degradation to any conceivable visual display device, so you use
asterisks for *bold* etc. to convey things and you know that cannot be
stripped out by any technology at all . . . . unless something comes
along and replaces a colon and a bracket with an emoticon, or starts
bolding things you never meant to be bold.
Anyway - I apologise for launching this rant here. I understand it is
entirely redundant and I am really happy about this!
I checked back in this newsgroup a month, not since late last year - and
my Mozilla install used my Netscape preferences, so I didn't notice that
plain text email was the default.
- Robin
