Re: FN-FORUM: RE: MIME email type

date posted 13th March 2006 13:04

On Mon, Mar 13, 2006 at 01:35:30PM -0000, Dave Cross wrote:
>
> Alain Williams wrote:
>
> >Thus they should *always* send out a plain text attachment as well as
> >an html version -- even better allow a customer the choice when they
> >sign up for whatever.
>
> I disagree with this. If I was happy to read HTML versions of email,
> then I'd still only be able to read it when I was using a graphical
> email program. There would still be times when I had access to my mail
> server, but not a graphical email program. Perhaps I'm on an ssh
> connection to my server or maybe I'm using a simplified web browser on a
> phone. In those cases I'd want to read the text-only version of the
> mail. But if I've signed up to the HTML version, then I won't have the
> text-only version.

I have just read your blog, I take your point. Being a pedant perhaps
the choice should be: '* text only; * html and text' ?

> The choice on whether to display the HTML or text version needs to be
> made depending on the capabilities of the current email program. And
> therefore you can't make that decision when you sign up to a mailing list.
>
> I know this wastes bandwidth, but I think that the benefits outweigh that.

--
Alain Williams
Parliament Hill Computers Ltd.
Linux Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256 http://www.phcomp.co.uk/

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