Friday Sep 14, 2007
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Friday Sep 14, 2007
I was recently (and good naturedly) accused of being a Luddite by an acquaintance for my preference for plain text emails. I always configure my email clients to send plain text only. Why do I do this? Well, some of it is habit. I've been sending and receiving emails in plain text for as long as I can remember. Once you start with a long established rut, you tend to stay in it.
There are also a bunch of technical reasons plain text emails are preferred over HTML. For example... when Microsoft released Outlook 2007, they based its HTML renderer on... get this... MS Word. The short of it is... this broke pretty much all HTML rendering. Any messages you send to someone using Outlook (and unfortunately that is a huge number of people) formatted as anything but excruciatingly simple HTML riskes it being displayed as an unreadable mess.
So, yes I still send emails in plain text because I know that my email can be read by anyone.
Does this make me a Luddite because I don't like to read emails with fluffy kittens on a pink background, with yellow text? (yes I received an email formatted like this from a relative) 
Using plain text for emails maximises your chances of *everybody* being able to read and respond to them. Just like ODF.
The other principle that I adhere to is this: use LaTeX or a word processor for words, use a spreadsheet for numbers, and a plain text email client for emails. Don't get them mixed up. Ever.
Oh, and DO NOT top post.
A: Because the answer comes before the question.
Q: Why is it bad to top post?
Posted by James McPherson on September 14, 2007 at 03:08 PM CEST #
I couldn't agree more... especially on the top posting thing. That is a subject of many a flame war on all of the mailing lists I participate in.
Keep it simple and everyone can use it.
Posted by cdc on September 14, 2007 at 03:16 PM CEST #
Tell the guy you are techno-Amish - one of the Plain Text People.
Posted by Patrick Giagnocavo on September 14, 2007 at 08:00 PM CEST #
There's loads of good advice in http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html - I has worked well for me since the day it came out.
Now if only I could get rid of Lotu Snotes and its insistence on forcing you to top post (since 6.5 you can do "with-internet-style repy", but you still can't make it the default). *grmbl*
Posted by Mads on September 14, 2007 at 11:26 PM CEST #
Now if only I could convince Outlook 2007 to stop top-posting, I'd be slightly happier. None of my other mail clients default to this broken behavior and I haven't sorted out how to get Thunderbird to talk to $new_job's Exchange server. I've worked with "real" mail servers and clients for over a decade and regressing into a Microsoft shop is maddening.
I swear, I become stupider every minute I use Office 2007.
Posted by Bob on November 12, 2008 at 11:48 PM CET #