[Gllug] HTML-based Email (Was: A linux printer ?)

[Jan Henkins]

  Hello Martin,

On 05/10/10 09:58, Martin A. Brooks wrote:
> Hi Jan
>
> On Tue, October 5, 2010 09:53, Jan Henkins wrote:
>> Don't you have a setting where you can convert HTML to text on the fly?
> It is advised that you post to the list in plain text.
>
> http://hinterlands.org/gllugfaq/#id2652795

OK, fair enough. Still, this is such an age-old issue (I can remember 
this being a major flash-point in the beginning 90's), that I would have 
thought coping mechanisms have developed with the times. I am aware that 
text-based email clients (like Pine/Alpine, and I'm almost certain more 
hardcore tools like Mutt and Gnus) would help out in reformatting HTML 
mail that slips through. Speaking for myself, I dislike HTML email for 
entirely different reasons:

* Being originally from a bandwidth-poor country, wasting bandwidth 
still rankles. Sending text and HTML parts of a message does indeed 
"waste bandwidth", so I still get a bit uptight about it, even if the 
basic reason for me getting irritated about it (lack of bandwidth, and 
what is available tends to be prohibitively expensive) doesn't really 
exist anymore. At least not here in the UK.
* I can really blow my top when an email arrives that looks like a 
Hallmark card.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard I try to educate people about HTML 
mail, the badness of it and all the rest, it keeps on flooding in. Mail 
from the National Trust (looks like a web page with clickable links and 
all), NHS direct, et cetera. I can delete all that mail, or I can 
configure my mailer to handle it gracefully. In the end, I gave up and 
moved to Thunderbird email, just so that I can carry on without getting 
angry at 8 out of every 10 emails sent to me.

The move to a fully graphical mailer like Thunderbird (3.1.4)  has some 
implications that is not immediately apparent, especially when the text 
email subject is touched on again. The whole thing of sending text-only 
email has now become quite a complex thing! ;-) Gone are the days where 
you can globally set up your mailer to send mail in one format or 
another, now you have to hunt about for a myriad of settings. I have 
found some, and for the benefit of all, here is a way to set up 
Thunderbird 3 to send text-only email.

* Select Edit->Preferences
* Select the Composition area
* In the "General" tab, click on the "Send Options" button
* Select the "Plain Text Domains" tab
* In the drop-down list at the top, choose "Convert the message to plan 
text", or whatever other option makes sense for your situation
* Click on the "Add" button next to the larger text area at the bottom, 
enter the "gllug.org.uk" domain and hit OK.
* Hit OK and Close to get back to your mailer.

With luck, you should now only send text-based mail to the list, or in 
fact any email address in the "gllug.org.uk" domain. I suppose it would 
be a good idea to add the domains for all the mailing lists you belong 
to. The test is this particular message, which is the first one I have 
sent after enabling the above settings. If it got to you in any form 
other than pure text only, please let me know. If it has this HTML 
attachment, please let me know! :-)


-- 
Regards,
Jan Henkins

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug