You're welcome. Actually I just expanded it into a little article
about the subject that you can find here:
http://www.efn.no/html-bad.html .
Thomas Gramstad
thomas@ifi.uio.no
----
On Wed, 8 May 2002, Carter, Roy wrote:
> OK, Thank you very much.
>
> Roy
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas Gramstad [mailto:thomas@ifi.uio.no]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 3:41 PM
> To: Carter, Roy
> Cc: majordomo-users@greatcircle.com; Perdue, Emmett
> Subject: Re: Email Client Suggestion
>
>
> On Wed, 8 May 2002, Carter, Roy wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I need some help as I am very new to MajorDomo. I have inherited the
> > software management of the MajorDomo installation, so I know very little
> the
> > application.
> >
> > We have had MajorDomo v 1.94.4 running as our list server for
> > several years, so the application runs fine. Recently one of our users
> > requested whether or not MajorDomo could broadcast html formatted email.
> I
> > read the documents for MajorDomo and I concluded that MajorDomo could send
> > html formatted email. But our system doesn't, it strips all the html tags
> > from the email text, so the result is text without tags, and raw links to
> > the images.
> >
> > Does anyone have a clue why MajorDomo strips the html tags, or if
> > this is a normal behavior? If it isn't normal behavior, then how could
> > someone have configured our MajorDomo server to act this why, so I can
> undo
> > it.
>
> Yes -- HTML in E-mail is a bad idea because:
>
> 1. The virus danger. Some viruses use Javascript/VBScript
> and thus can propagate via HTML mail.
> 2. Some E-mail clients display HTML-code in E-mail as HTML-code,
> and not as "stylized text".
> 3. HTML-encoded postings may be mangled when they are distributed
> via listserver software.
> 4. Messages addressed to and containing commands to a list
> server or other type of robot that are embedded in HTML code will
> usually not be recognized by the robot, and thus the commands will
> not be executed by the robot.
> 5. A posting with HTML-coded (stylized) text is 4-5 times as
> big as the same posting in plain text -- this adds up to
> a big increase in disk usage, and in download time (esp.
> if one is using a modem) for such postings.
> 6. Stylized text looks different in various Email programs,
> different computer systems, and different word processing
> programs, whose files and formats are often not fully
> compatible with each other. Any of these can cause trouble
> with attachments, which are displayed differently. In some
> cases, the message may come through as nothing but garbled
> text. Plain text, on the other hand, works everywhere and
> looks pretty much the same everywhere.
> 7. Microsoft uses non-standard HTML that deviates from the
> HTML standard and thus doesn't work properly on other
> platforms like Mac, Linux/Unix, Lotus Notes etc.
> 8. It's up to the receiver, not the sender, to decide
> such things as font types and sizes, text colors and background
> colors (if any) in their E-mail. For the receiver, HTML E-mail
> is like a TV without color- and contrast buttons. That's not
> progress, it's the opposite.
> 9. Some spammers use a picture reference to a server to
> determine which addresses are actually working.
> 10. Many command line interface mail user agents have
> problems with HTML e-mail.
> 11. The colors in HTML e-mail work poorly with many non-PC computer
> screens or work stations.
>
> Basically, HTML belongs on web pages, and e-mail isn't web pages.
>
> Each of these reasons alone is a sufficient reason for avoiding
> HTML in E-mail.
>
> HTML in E-mail isn't an industrial standard (plain text is).
>
> So my recommendation would be to avoid HTML in E-mail whenever
> possible, and the easiest way to do that is to simply strip it
> from postings. So your Majordomo installation has a tool that
> does that. Alternatively you could try to teach your posters
> to turn off HTML encoding of their E-mail (see e.g.,
> http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/listadmins/plaintext.html or
> http://www.thepwa.net/members/disabling.html ).
>
> Thomas Gramstad
> thomas@ifi.uio.no
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