current/modern email netiquette

G'day, been a while since I posted here. I want to ask some
questions about current/modern netiquette guidelines, given that
RFC1855 was written in the 1990s and both hardware and software
have moved ahead leaps and bounds since then.

First - html emails. I'm getting hounded by work colleagues to
allow them to send html emails so they can format them with
coloured text, bold etc. I have resisted this for 8 years, but
when asked why not, and my answer is because of extra bandwidth,
html mails look more like spam/scams/viruses etc I get these
blank looks. I honestly don't believe the bandwidth factor any
more, considering the volume of traffic these days, and bandwidth
hogs like youtube etc far outweigh emails.

What are your thoughts on this?

Second - sig delimiters. I've always used "-- " on a line by
itself to delimit sigs. The software I use for both email and
usenet, mutt and slrn, impose this, even Thunderbird recognises
it. I'm sure many others do.

But I notice some very influential and knowledgeable people in
the email world don't seem to stick to that delimiter guide.

eg:
Mark Crispin IIRC does something like "-- Mark" one the one
line.
Another prominent member on the procmail mailing list uses "---"
There are some others that surprised me, but can't think of
references for now.

Just curious about thoughts on the sig delimiter thing.

--
Troy Piggins

Re: current/modern email netiquette

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007, Troy Piggins wrote:
> Second - sig delimiters. I've always used "-- " on a line by
> itself to delimit sigs.

That is an informal convention. I have signed my email in the way I do
now since the early 1970s, and see no reason to change; especially given
that Usenet is dying.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Re: current/modern email netiquette

* Mark Crispin is quoted
* & my replies are inline below :
> On Fri, 23 Nov 2007, Troy Piggins wrote:
>> Second - sig delimiters. I've always used "-- " on a line by
>> itself to delimit sigs.
>
> That is an informal convention. I have signed my email in the way I do
> now since the early 1970s, and see no reason to change; especially given
> that Usenet is dying.
>
> -- Mark --
>
> http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
> Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
> Si vis pacem, para bellum.

G'day Mark. Sorry for mentioning your name. I didn't mean to
single you out, but considering your standing in the
internet/email/etc community it puzzled me about this delimiter
thing.

Agreed it is an informal convention, but given that most of the
MUAs and newsreaders I have used acknowledge and handle it - by
stripping it from replies or colouring it differently etc - I
assumed that at least among the authors it was being adopted.

I wasn't only referring to usenet, in fact I was mainly referring
to mail - hence this group.

I have no comment on usenet dying. I still use it frequently and
don't have a problem with it.

What are your thoughts about html emails?

--
Troy Piggins

Re: current/modern email netiquette

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 11:38:17 +1000, Troy Piggins
wrote:

>First - html emails. I'm getting hounded by work colleagues to
>allow them to send html emails so they can format them with
>coloured text, bold etc. I have resisted this for 8 years, but
>when asked why not, and my answer is because of extra bandwidth,
>html mails look more like spam/scams/viruses etc I get these
>blank looks. I honestly don't believe the bandwidth factor any
>more, considering the volume of traffic these days, and bandwidth
>hogs like youtube etc far outweigh emails.

I tell them HTML mail gets a much bigger change to get stuck in spam
filters than any kind of plain text e-mail. Expecially if they use
coloured text and bold.

>Second - sig delimiters. I've always used "-- " on a line by
>itself to delimit sigs. The software I use for both email and
>usenet, mutt and slrn, impose this, even Thunderbird recognises
>it. I'm sure many others do.

I use it too. Because it is so easy with all kinds of (good) e-mail
clients that can handle (= delete on reply) it.

--
Peter Peters

Re: current/modern email netiquette

* Peter Peters is quoted
* & my replies are inline below :
> On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 11:38:17 +1000, Troy Piggins
> wrote:
>
>>First - html emails. I'm getting hounded by work colleagues to
>>allow them to send html emails so they can format them with
>>coloured text, bold etc. I have resisted this for 8 years, but
>>when asked why not, and my answer is because of extra bandwidth,
>>html mails look more like spam/scams/viruses etc I get these
>>blank looks. I honestly don't believe the bandwidth factor any
>>more, considering the volume of traffic these days, and bandwidth
>>hogs like youtube etc far outweigh emails.
>
> I tell them HTML mail gets a much bigger change to get stuck in spam
> filters than any kind of plain text e-mail. Expecially if they use
> coloured text and bold.

That's what I say also.

>>Second - sig delimiters. I've always used "-- " on a line by
>>itself to delimit sigs. The software I use for both email and
>>usenet, mutt and slrn, impose this, even Thunderbird recognises
>>it. I'm sure many others do.
>
> I use it too. Because it is so easy with all kinds of (good) e-mail
> clients that can handle (= delete on reply) it.

Exactly.

Thanks for your comments Peter.

--
Troy Piggins

Re: current/modern email netiquette

Troy Piggins wrote:

>First - html emails. I'm getting hounded by work colleagues to
>allow them to send html emails so they can format them with
>coloured text, bold etc. I have resisted this for 8 years, but
>when asked why not, and my answer is because of extra bandwidth,
>html mails look more like spam/scams/viruses etc I get these
>blank looks. I honestly don't believe the bandwidth factor any
>more, considering the volume of traffic these days, and bandwidth
>hogs like youtube etc far outweigh emails.

I think HTML in mails gets a lot of bad press, and I'm surprised you
haven't been scorched to the eyebrows already by people flaming you
for even daring to ask the question. On the bandwidth issue, I think
you are right to say it isn't an issue any more, especially
considering the amount of bandwidth lost to YouTube etc during working
hours. I'm not so sure it ever was a real issue though, just an excuse
dreamt up by the techies.

Emails already contain a lot of extra info in the form of headers
which very few people look at or need to look at. Look at the typical
email and as well as all the routing info, you are likely to find a
clutter of headers such as mime versions and content types and
X-headers and so on.

Then there are signatures with those oh-so-witty sayings and
disclaimers which add a lot of extra bloat. Some of those disclaimers
go on and on and on and on, and people use them because everyone else
does, so they think its some sort of standard, but I've yet to meet
someone who has taken legal advice on their signature.

And quoting of pervious messages. So many people these days think that
top posting your reply above the previous mail is "the accepted
standard" and the idea of quoting just the parts you are interested
in, putting them into context, and trimming the rest seems to be an
idea of a bygone age. I guess the problem here is that Microsoft don't
provide a one-click button for intellignet quoting and a lot of people
these days don't expect to have to do any work themselves to make
themselves understood. The onus these days is on other people to
understand you. Or for a wizard to do it for you. Communication skills
are a dying art.

So for all the above reasons, I think the bandwidth argument against
HTML mails is a failure, but even if it wasn't, there is an even
bigger bandwidth argument to deal with. If you don't allow people to
send HTML emails, they send attached Word documents, spreadsheets,
PDFs or even, god help us, Powerpoint files, because then they can
highlight the document the way they want to. These attachments are a
lot bigger than any HTML would be, a lot less convenient to use than
an email, and have a lot more potential to carry viruses etc, so by
banning HTML mail you may actually be increasing the bandwidth problem
and the security problem.

Some people wave the security flag, that HTML can contain viruses,
spyware, webbugs and so on. First off, if you cannot trust your users
to look at a HTML formatted message in their email client then you
sure as hell shouldn't trust them to run around the web clicking on
pages at random from Google. Email clients which render HTML can do so
without running any scripts, they can often be configured to not load
images, external style sheets, etc, and there is no reason at all why
an email client should be allowed to run java, javascript, ActiveX and
so on. Even simple Outlook Express can be configured to run in the
Restricted Zone and block off web bugs etc.

I know a lot of spam filtering systems score HTML mails badly but
these systems are created by techies who seem to want to live back in
1980. Just because spammers use HTML mail doesn't mean no-one else
should be allowed to use it. If I wantr to send HTML email AND if the
people I'm sending it to want to receive HTML email from me, then it
is no business of a system admin to tell me that we shouldn't be
allowed to do that.

HTML is about formatting text and it is a perfect language for adding
simple formatting to text documents in emails. In the past we have
often seen people use text conventions such as using *asterisks* or
_underscores_ to emphasis a bit of text, or WRITING IN CAPITALS to
make one bit stand out, or S P A C E D O U T L E T T E R S for
headings, dashes to underline things, and so on. Those are just poor
substitutes for using italics and bold etc. Nobody would dream of
using those old fashioned ASCII artefacts if they were writing a memo
using a modern word processor, so why should they use them when
writing an email? There is also the accessibility issue. If you use a
voice synthesiser to read out your mails, it should be able to handle
HTML markup much better than those ASCII conventions.

We've all got out coloured pens at some time or another and marked up
different parts of a complex document so we could more easily see who
had to do what, and HTML makes it possible to do those sorts of things
in email just as easily. When we need to use diagrams in a memo it is
so much more readable if you have a diagram inline with the text
instead of having to get people to refer seperately to an attachment
or an external image. Laying out information in rows and columns is
something we do all the time on paper, so why not in email? (And yes,
I can do columns in ASCII, but I have a life)

As I see it, the real problem with HTML is not the people who use it
to communicate, its the people who use it to look cool. I see a lot of
people decide to write all their email in blue ink which makes it
harder to pick out the links. I've had emails where people use green
lettering on a pink or orange background, which is painful on the eye,
people who type in giant yellow letters on a black background, which
was made worse since the black background was an external file which
sometimes didn't get attached so it came through as yellow on white,
people who use backgrounds looking like scottish tartan so every third
word was lost in the background. There are people who use a different
font and a different colour on every line, sometimes even within the
same word, not because it helps the reader understand what they are
trying to say, but because they think its fun, and I'm an old stick in
the mud when I complain that it makes their mails very confusing.

And then there are the over-paid corporate image tossers who think
HTML is a way of making their emails look like the company headed
notepaper, with exactly the right sized corporate font, and the right
colour scheme, and all the other garbage that they think is oh so
important to the world. They create some of the most illegible mails
of all and do more damage than good to their corporate image. They
also seem to create the templates they use in MS Word or something and
so they really are bloated with a collossal amount of CSS style
information and Microsoft oddities when simple HTML tags would have
fared much better.

So I'd suggest that you should allow your users to send HTML mail if
they wish, but only after they've done an induction course on
communication. Use HTML formatting in cases where it improves the
clarity of communication, where it is for the benefit of the reader.
Don't use it for the entertainment of the letter writter, or as a way
of them forcing their "individuality" onto the reader.

I have my own email client set to both write and read in plain text by
default and there are very few incoming HTML emails which cannot be
read as plain text, even when it is HTML only with no matching text
part. If it is from a known sender and if it is apparent that the
formatting is important then I'll switch to HTML rendering for that
one mail. But that's my choice. No one can force HTML formatting onto
me if I don't want it.

However, the same cannot be said of messages sent as Word or Excel
documents to get around the no-HTML-mail rules set by their sys
admins. When that happens, I am forced to use the document in exactly
the format that it was sent, no matter how illegible that may be.

I find the neater formatting of HTML mail is especially welcomed in
things like invoices where the tabular layout makes things clear and
the scalability of HTML means it renders well both on screen and on
the printer. We've done systems where we've converted old ASCII
formatted reports into HTML formatted reports which are emailed to the
various users and they are absolutely deleted with the clearer
formatting, think its the best thing since sliced bread. Yes, a couple
of external users found they couldn't get them to start with because
their sys admins were blocking them purely on the basis of the mails
being HTML only, and those sys admins tried to say that we needed a
duplicate text version and foolishly tried to blind us with techie
jargon. I've also been told that the "correct" way to handle this
would have been to put the report on a web server and give each one a
password protected link so they could read their report. Talk about
wanting us to jump through hoops for the sake of a bit of dogma. These
intransigent techies do themselves no favours by their posturing.

I fully admit there are drawbacks to giving HTML formatting
capabilities to users with no communication skills, but that's no
reason to say no-one else should be allowed to use it.

Re: current/modern email netiquette

Troy Piggins wrote:

> First - html emails. I'm getting hounded by work colleagues to
> allow them to send html emails so they can format them with
> coloured text, bold etc.

You will probably lose this battle. I enforce a no-HTML mail at
work, but I can do that because I'm the CEO. :-)

Also, if our mail server receives a multipart/alternative e-mail with
text/plain and text/html subparts, it automatically deletes the html
part so we don't even *see* the coloured text, bold fonts, etc.

I think the only thing you can do is try to educate people:

1) HTML mail is more likely to be flagged as spam.

2) The prevalence of HTML mail makes phishing scams and sneaky spam much
easier. As good citizens, we shouldn't encourage the use of HTML mail.

3) There's no guarantee that the HTML mail you send will look the same
to the recipient as it did when you sent that. If you need absolute
fidelity of formatted material, use PDF.

However, based on a lot of experience in the e-mail business, I doubt
these arguments will be very persuasive.

Regards,

David.

Re: current/modern email netiquette

* Landmark is quoted
* & my replies are inline below :
> Troy Piggins wrote:
>
>>First - html emails. I'm getting hounded by work colleagues to
>>allow them to send html emails so they can format them with
>>coloured text, bold etc. I have resisted this for 8 years, but
>>when asked why not, and my answer is because of extra bandwidth,
>>html mails look more like spam/scams/viruses etc I get these
>>blank looks. I honestly don't believe the bandwidth factor any
>>more, considering the volume of traffic these days, and bandwidth
>>hogs like youtube etc far outweigh emails.
>
> I think HTML in mails gets a lot of bad press, and I'm surprised you
> haven't been scorched to the eyebrows already by people flaming you
> for even daring to ask the question.

Perhaps I'm not alone. I didn't post to flame.

> On the bandwidth issue, I think
> you are right to say it isn't an issue any more, especially
> considering the amount of bandwidth lost to YouTube etc during working
> hours. I'm not so sure it ever was a real issue though, just an excuse
> dreamt up by the techies.

Oh look, I'm sure it /was/ and issue back in the day. I work in
an engineering consultancy where many of our emails are sending
huge autocad drawings or pdf files, often 5-7Mb in size. Back 5
years ago we'd be getting CDs burnt and couriering them, or
receiving hardcopies. I can't remember the last time we got
hardcopy drawings. All email now.

My point is that in comparison the small amount of overhead of
html in emails is almost insignificant.

Of course they do look more like spam, but that's another issue.
I think properly formed html messages may be acceptable?

> Emails already contain a lot of extra info in the form of headers
> which very few people look at or need to look at. Look at the typical
> email and as well as all the routing info, you are likely to find a
> clutter of headers such as mime versions and content types and
> X-headers and so on.

That stuff is different to what I'm talking about. Mime and
Content-Type headers are /required/ for proper delivery/display
of the message whether it's plain text or html.

Of course there are silly headers like X-Face etc that are
unnecessary, but their overhead is negligible.

> Then there are signatures with those oh-so-witty sayings and
> disclaimers which add a lot of extra bloat. Some of those disclaimers
> go on and on and on and on, and people use them because everyone else
> does, so they think its some sort of standard, but I've yet to meet
> someone who has taken legal advice on their signature.

We see heaps of those - they're ridiculous and that's a whole
other thread. Some of them are longer than the actual message
they are trying to convey.

> And quoting of pervious messages. So many people these days think that
> top posting your reply above the previous mail is "the accepted
> standard" and the idea of quoting just the parts you are interested
> in, putting them into context, and trimming the rest seems to be an
> idea of a bygone age. I guess the problem here is that Microsoft don't
> provide a one-click button for intellignet quoting and a lot of people
> these days don't expect to have to do any work themselves to make
> themselves understood. The onus these days is on other people to
> understand you. Or for a wizard to do it for you. Communication skills
> are a dying art.

Again, top-posting is another issue. I have always, always
bottom posted, or interspersed at the relevant points, on usenet
and mailing lists because readers there understand that's a good
way of keeping context.

But some of these work emails I get have been forwarded and
replied to like 5 times, and all of them top-posted. I gave up.
I now top post for work related emails because the majority of
readers there wouldn't understand what I was writing if it was
any other way.

[snip more good points about html email]

Wow, thanks for taking the time to write all that Landmark.
Appreciate your thoughts.

--
Troy Piggins | http://piggo.com/~troy
RLU#415538 ,-O (o- O
O ) //\ O
`-O V_/_ OOO

current/modern email netiquette: text/html bodyparts

TP> I have resisted this for 8 years, but when asked
TP> why not, and my answer is because of extra
TP> bandwidth, html mails look more like
TP> spam/scams/viruses etc I get these blank looks.

myths-dispelled.html>

As well you should.

current/modern email netiquette: signatures

s> Second - sig delimiters. [...]
s> But I notice some very influential and knowledgeable people in
s> the email world don't seem to stick to that delimiter guide.

The thing about "sigs" is that they aren't really signatures, as one
would find them on paper mail, at all. A proper digital signature
used for authentication involves "multipart/signed" body parts, and
isn't incorporated into the bodypart that it is signing. So for that
the notion of a "sig delimiter" makes no sense. Equally, the identity
of the sender/author is already provided in the "Sender:"/"From:"
headers, and there is no need to duplicate it in the body.

The idea of a "sig" is in large part an ill-founded one. It is
derived, in part, from erroneously thinking that the structure of an
Internet electronic mail message is akin to that of a formal paper
letter, with the recipient's name and address at the top and the
sender's name and signature at the bottom. It isn't. As RFC 822
section 1.2 explains, Internet electronic mail messages are structured
akin to office memoranda, with sender and recipient names and
addresses prefixed with "From:" and "To:" at the top.

Given that the underlying concept is shaky, debate about what form
"sig delimiters" should take is moot.

Re: current/modern email netiquette

* David F. Skoll is quoted
* & my replies are inline below :
> Troy Piggins wrote:
>
>> First - html emails. I'm getting hounded by work colleagues to
>> allow them to send html emails so they can format them with
>> coloured text, bold etc.
>
> You will probably lose this battle. I enforce a no-HTML mail at
> work, but I can do that because I'm the CEO. :-)

:)

> Also, if our mail server receives a multipart/alternative e-mail with
> text/plain and text/html subparts, it automatically deletes the html
> part so we don't even *see* the coloured text, bold fonts, etc.
>
> I think the only thing you can do is try to educate people:
>
> 1) HTML mail is more likely to be flagged as spam.
>
> 2) The prevalence of HTML mail makes phishing scams and sneaky spam much
> easier. As good citizens, we shouldn't encourage the use of HTML mail.
>
> 3) There's no guarantee that the HTML mail you send will look the same
> to the recipient as it did when you sent that. If you need absolute
> fidelity of formatted material, use PDF.
>
> However, based on a lot of experience in the e-mail business, I doubt
> these arguments will be very persuasive.

Thanks for your thought David. I agree with all of those points.
Also with the "probably lose this battle", even though I'm a
director. :(

--
Troy Piggins | http://piggo.com/~troy
RLU#415538 ,-O (o- O
O ) //\ O
`-O V_/_ OOO

Re: current/modern email netiquette

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007, Troy Piggins wrote:

TP>
TP> But some of these work emails I get have been forwarded and
TP> replied to like 5 times, and all of them top-posted. I gave up.
TP> I now top post for work related emails because the majority of
TP> readers there wouldn't understand what I was writing if it was
TP> any other way.
TP>


For my normal email, I do tend to use plain text, snip and then post after
the relevant sections of the email I am answering.

At work, I have almost given up but I often change a received email to
plain text, snip, and reply at the bottom. But I am often copied, in late
in the day, on a multi-posted, top posted email. So I print it out,
discard the two pages of disclaimers, then draw a red line between the
posts. This makes it easier to go to the bottom, go up a bit, read down
the first email, go up to the top of the previous email, read downwards,
and so on.

Some months or maybe years ago, I received a forwarded email from a
colleague at work and there was a 2 second pause whilst a little photo
came up. Odd, I thought. At that point, I discovered that one could post
links to outside sources in html emails (this little photo was actually a
link to a very big photo which caused the time delay) and I have been
having fun with my out-of-office emails ever since.

Breaking out-of-office-email ettiquette is useful. If you cause a reply
to be sent to every email received at work whilst you are on holiday, it
causes the frequent and irritating emailers to actually stop sending
the useless emails that will be out of date by the time you get back.

--
Alan

( If replying by mail, please note that all "sardines" are canned.
However, unless this a very old message, a "tuna" will swim right
through. )

Re: current/modern email netiquette: text/html bodyparts

* J de Boyne Pollard is quoted
* & my replies are inline below :
> TP> I have resisted this for 8 years, but when asked
> TP> why not, and my answer is because of extra
> TP> bandwidth, html mails look more like
> TP> spam/scams/viruses etc I get these blank looks.
>
> > myths-dispelled.html>
>
> As well you should.

I should have re-phrased the above, "... extra bandwidth, html
mails _have_a_higher_chance_ of looking more like
spam/scams/_links_to_malicious_websites_ etc ..."

Some of the points you make on your link above may be true and
valid, but they need some expansion. I get the gist of what you
are saying, but it would take too long to rebut all points.

For example, I know HTML is text as opposed to binary. But it is
not /plain/ text. Some MUAs may not be able to render html, and
if a message is sent as text/html only they see all the HTML
code. The average user I am talking about doesn't know a thing
about HTML and sees this as jibberish. Admittedly the average
user is probably using a modern GUI-based MUA that will render
HTML - Thunderbird in our company.

I don't see how you can say they don't waste bandwidth compared
to plain text. Of course they do. But the point of my OP was
that this is becoming less and less of an issue relatively
speaking.

We regularly get newsletter type HTML messages that contain URLs
to external websites for images to make their newsletter more
pretty. I don't allow the HTML to download these images by
default, but the point is that the /authors/ of the emails don't
understand what they are doing and the possible implications if
it were a malicious email.

I'll wager that less than 1% of those who send HTML messages
to us have ever read an article with any of the points in your
"Composing Good HTML" link.

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts.

--
Troy Piggins | http://piggo.com/~troy
RLU#415538 ,-O (o- O
O ) //\ O
`-O V_/_ OOO

Re: current/modern email netiquette: signatures

* J de Boyne Pollard is quoted
* & my replies are inline below :
> s> Second - sig delimiters. [...]
> s> But I notice some very influential and knowledgeable people in
> s> the email world don't seem to stick to that delimiter guide.
>
> The thing about "sigs" is that they aren't really signatures, as one
> would find them on paper mail, at all. A proper digital signature
> used for authentication involves "multipart/signed" body parts, and
> isn't incorporated into the bodypart that it is signing. So for that
> the notion of a "sig delimiter" makes no sense. Equally, the identity
> of the sender/author is already provided in the "Sender:"/"From:"
> headers, and there is no need to duplicate it in the body.

Sure, but not one of the clients/consultants etc that send us
emails have ever used "proper" digital signatures. Yet they
nearly all have some sort of templated signoff at the bottom of
their message, some with and some without some form of delimiter.

> The idea of a "sig" is in large part an ill-founded one. It is
> derived, in part, from erroneously thinking that the structure of an
> Internet electronic mail message is akin to that of a formal paper
> letter, with the recipient's name and address at the top and the
> sender's name and signature at the bottom. It isn't. As RFC 822
> section 1.2 explains, Internet electronic mail messages are structured
> akin to office memoranda, with sender and recipient names and
> addresses prefixed with "From:" and "To:" at the top.
>
> Given that the underlying concept is shaky, debate about what form
> "sig delimiters" should take is moot.

Hmm, in your previous post you refer to your "Myths" webpage that
references the GNKSA at one point, yet here you ignore Son of
RFC1036 and GNKSA's recommendations about sigdashes. But we're
talking about mail as opposed to usenet.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

--
Troy Piggins | http://piggo.com/~troy
RLU#415538 ,-O (o- O
O ) //\ O
`-O V_/_ OOO

Re: current/modern email netiquette

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007, Troy Piggins wrote:

TP>
TP> Oh look, I'm sure it /was/ and issue back in the day. I work in
TP> an engineering consultancy where many of our emails are sending
TP> huge autocad drawings or pdf files, often 5-7Mb in size. Back 5
TP> years ago we'd be getting CDs burnt and couriering them, or
TP> receiving hardcopies. I can't remember the last time we got
TP> hardcopy drawings. All email now.
TP>

There does seem to be a lot of uneccessary crud in html messages. The
logic of the html rendering programs seems to be: start courier 10 point,
make it blue blah blah. Then: end of paragraph so switch it all off.
Then: start courier 10 point etc etc. And that is in a message that
doesn't actually have any formatting that the sender knows about as he has
just typed in text!

But, as I'm sure JdeBP would say, those are not the fault of html per se.

--
Alan

( If replying by mail, please note that all "sardines" are canned.
However, unless this a very old message, a "tuna" will swim right
through. )

Re: current/modern email netiquette

* Alan Clifford is quoted
* & my replies are inline below :
> On Fri, 23 Nov 2007, Troy Piggins wrote:
>
> TP>
> TP> But some of these work emails I get have been forwarded and
> TP> replied to like 5 times, and all of them top-posted. I gave up.
> TP> I now top post for work related emails because the majority of
> TP> readers there wouldn't understand what I was writing if it was
> TP> any other way.
>
> For my normal email, I do tend to use plain text, snip and then post after
> the relevant sections of the email I am answering.
>
> At work, I have almost given up but I often change a received email to
> plain text, snip, and reply at the bottom. But I am often copied, in late
> in the day, on a multi-posted, top posted email. So I print it out,
> discard the two pages of disclaimers, then draw a red line between the
> posts. This makes it easier to go to the bottom, go up a bit, read down
> the first email, go up to the top of the previous email, read downwards,
> and so on.

I know what you mean. It's a pain.

> Some months or maybe years ago, I received a forwarded email from a
> colleague at work and there was a 2 second pause whilst a little photo
> came up. Odd, I thought. At that point, I discovered that one could post
> links to outside sources in html emails (this little photo was actually a
> link to a very big photo which caused the time delay) and I have been
> having fun with my out-of-office emails ever since.
>
> Breaking out-of-office-email ettiquette is useful. If you cause a reply
> to be sent to every email received at work whilst you are on holiday, it
> causes the frequent and irritating emailers to actually stop sending
> the useless emails that will be out of date by the time you get back.

Heh - that's naughty ;)

Thanks for your thoughts.

--
Troy Piggins | http://piggo.com/~troy
RLU#415538 ,-O (o- O
O ) //\ O
`-O V_/_ OOO

Re: current/modern email netiquette: text/html bodyparts

Troy Piggins wrote:

>I don't see how you can say they don't waste bandwidth compared
>to plain text. Of course they do.

No, that is not necessarily true. It is true that a great many mail
agents which compose HTML emails do it in a very messy fashion, and
that they also create a duplicate plain text version, but if the HTML
is composed properly then there is no need for a large overhead, and
it could even be smaller than the plain text equivalent. The heart of
the matter is that "plain text" is bound to be smaller, but most
"plain text" is usually modified by the user to try to embed
additional non-textual meaning in there. For example:

To emphasise things in plain text, users often put underscores or
asterisks around them, like this: *...*. That adds two bytes, as
opposed to the seven bytes used in HTML for ..., but if people
want to add emphasis over a longer block of text they might do
something like this:

* The quick brown fox
* jumps over the lazy
* dog

That has added six characters (asterisk plus space) and a couple of
line breaks, so as well as being more cumbersome to prepare and not
rescaling to page width properly, it is also now larger than the HTML
version would have been. A lot of people want to use bullet lists and
the four characters of the

Re: current/modern email netiquette

Troy Piggins wrote:

>Oh look, I'm sure it /was/ and issue back in the day. I work in
>an engineering consultancy where many of our emails are sending
>huge autocad drawings or pdf files, often 5-7Mb in size. Back 5
>years ago we'd be getting CDs burnt and couriering them, or
>receiving hardcopies.

and

>That stuff is different to what I'm talking about. Mime and
>Content-Type headers are /required/ for proper delivery/display
>of the message whether it's plain text or html.

I didn't express my point very well. I'm not saying that bandwidth as
a whole wasn't an issue. I well remember a time when getting a one
megabyte document sent to me by email meant my PC was unusable for 20
minutes and because I paid by the minute for internet access it was
significantly cheaper to copy it to a diskette and post it to me.

I was trying to say that if the small overhead of the HTML mail was
really an issue then all the other junk that we get in emails should
also have been an issue. Some of those headers were pure bloat
advertising the email software. Other headers are wordy nice-to-haves
but missing a mime header out of a plain text email doesn't hamper its
delivery or display in any way. Signature blocks and disclaimers and
so on are obviously redundant. Requoting the whole of an email and
adding "Thanks for the info" at the bottom is a collosal waste of
bandwidth. So my point was that if the people attacking HTML on
bandwidth issues were sincere in their argument, they ought to have
been attacking all these other wastes of bandwidth with equal vigour.
And on the whole they didn't. They were just anti-HTML zealots who
were beiong economical with the truth.

So what I was trying to say was "Bandwidth was never a reason not to
use HTML formatted mails".

Re: current/modern email netiquette

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 08:34:11 -0500, David F. Skoll wrote:
> Troy Piggins wrote:
>
> > First - html emails. I'm getting hounded by work colleagues to
> > allow them to send html emails so they can format them with
> > coloured text, bold etc.
>
> You will probably lose this battle. I enforce a no-HTML mail at
> work, but I can do that because I'm the CEO. :-)
>
> Also, if our mail server receives a multipart/alternative e-mail with
> text/plain and text/html subparts, it automatically deletes the html
> part so we don't even *see* the coloured text, bold fonts, etc.

Unfortunately I'm seeing more and more emails whose text/plain subpart
says "this email is formatted with HTML, please upgrade"...*sigh*

> I think the only thing you can do is try to educate people:
>
> 1) HTML mail is more likely to be flagged as spam.
>
> 2) The prevalence of HTML mail makes phishing scams and sneaky spam much
> easier. As good citizens, we shouldn't encourage the use of HTML mail.
>
> 3) There's no guarantee that the HTML mail you send will look the same
> to the recipient as it did when you sent that. If you need absolute
> fidelity of formatted material, use PDF.
>
> However, based on a lot of experience in the e-mail business, I doubt
> these arguments will be very persuasive.

I agree with what you've said, but there's a little voice in my head
that reminds me that if I were in charge, surely we'd all be using
VT100s and my mom would not be on the internet. On the other hand,
companies (especially MS) do a shamefully poor job of respecting
existing standards when they decide to bless an emerging technology with
throngs of newbies.

Mike

Re: current/modern email netiquette

Does any Windows email client output clean and efficient HTML by
default? Almost all the HTML I see in email is hideously bloated and
has atrocious style. From experience writing simple Web pages, I know
that HTML can look nice while taking hardly more bandwidth than plain
text. But my attempts with Outlook Express and Thunderbird turned into
wrestling matches with the program. It was easier to write raw HTML in
Windows Notepad and paste it into the email! Even then, I had to
beware of the email client quietly "improving" my work. I gave up and
have stayed with plain text ever since.

That was a couple years ago. I hope things have improved since then.

--
Paul Hirose
To reply by email remove INVALID

Re: current/modern email netiquette

* Landmark is quoted
* & my replies are inline below :
> Troy Piggins wrote:
>
>>Oh look, I'm sure it /was/ and issue back in the day. I work in
>>an engineering consultancy where many of our emails are sending
>>huge autocad drawings or pdf files, often 5-7Mb in size. Back 5
>>years ago we'd be getting CDs burnt and couriering them, or
>>receiving hardcopies.
>
> and
>
>>That stuff is different to what I'm talking about. Mime and
>>Content-Type headers are /required/ for proper delivery/display
>>of the message whether it's plain text or html.
>
> I didn't express my point very well. I'm not saying that bandwidth as
> a whole wasn't an issue. I well remember a time when getting a one
> megabyte document sent to me by email meant my PC was unusable for 20
> minutes and because I paid by the minute for internet access it was
> significantly cheaper to copy it to a diskette and post it to me.
>
> I was trying to say that if the small overhead of the HTML mail was
> really an issue then all the other junk that we get in emails should
> also have been an issue. Some of those headers were pure bloat
> advertising the email software. Other headers are wordy nice-to-haves
> but missing a mime header out of a plain text email doesn't hamper its
> delivery or display in any way. Signature blocks and disclaimers and
> so on are obviously redundant. Requoting the whole of an email and
> adding "Thanks for the info" at the bottom is a collosal waste of
> bandwidth. So my point was that if the people attacking HTML on
> bandwidth issues were sincere in their argument, they ought to have
> been attacking all these other wastes of bandwidth with equal vigour.
> And on the whole they didn't. They were just anti-HTML zealots who
> were beiong economical with the truth.
>
> So what I was trying to say was "Bandwidth was never a reason not to
> use HTML formatted mails".

Aah, gotcha now. Thanks.

--
Troy Piggins | http://piggo.com/~troy
RLU#415538 ,-O (o- O
O ) //\ O
`-O V_/_ OOO

Re: current/modern email netiquette

* Paul Hirose is quoted
* & my replies are inline below :
> Does any Windows email client output clean and efficient HTML by
> default? Almost all the HTML I see in email is hideously bloated and
> has atrocious style. From experience writing simple Web pages, I know
> that HTML can look nice while taking hardly more bandwidth than plain
> text. But my attempts with Outlook Express and Thunderbird turned into
> wrestling matches with the program. It was easier to write raw HTML in
> Windows Notepad and paste it into the email! Even then, I had to
> beware of the email client quietly "improving" my work. I gave up and
> have stayed with plain text ever since.
>
> That was a couple years ago. I hope things have improved since then.

TBH I have no idea. I have not used html to compose emails and I
have not viewed the code they produce. I will now. THanks.

--
Troy Piggins | http://piggo.com/~troy
RLU#415538 ,-O (o- O
O ) //\ O
`-O V_/_ OOO

Re: current/modern email netiquette

Mike Hunter wrote:

>I agree with what you've said, but there's a little voice in my head
>that reminds me that if I were in charge, surely we'd all be using
>VT100s and my mom would not be on the internet.

I think we all feel like that sometimes. Once we pass 25 then we are
well on the way towards geriatrics living in the past where computers
are concerned. And if, like me, you don't have a facebook entry and
can't write in textspeak then there iz no hope 4 u.... innit.

Handling HTML Mail (was Re: current/modern email netiquette)

Mike Hunter wrote:

> Unfortunately I'm seeing more and more emails whose text/plain subpart
> says "this email is formatted with HTML, please upgrade"...*sigh*

I've never seen such an e-mail from an actual person using a traditional
MUA. All of those kinds of e-mails seem to be spam, and they don't
make it past our filter anyway.

We do occasionally receive messages that have only a text/html part
(no multipart/alternative container) and those obviously remain as HTML
and we see all the pretty markup.

Regards,

David.

Re: current/modern email netiquette

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 13:31:18 +0000, Landmark
wrote:

>I'm not so sure it ever was a real issue though, just an excuse
>dreamt up by the techies.

I remember the days where you had to pay 50 (or 5) for every kB of
e-mail. In those cases you wouldn't dare to include 90% (like today
seems usual) overhead in making it look "nice".

--
Peter Peters

Re: current/modern email netiquette

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 09:05:43 -0500, Mike Hunter
wrote:

>> Also, if our mail server receives a multipart/alternative e-mail with
>> text/plain and text/html subparts, it automatically deletes the html
>> part so we don't even *see* the coloured text, bold fonts, etc.
>
>Unfortunately I'm seeing more and more emails whose text/plain subpart
>says "this email is formatted with HTML, please upgrade"...*sigh*

Do you see those? These get thrown away by all^H^H^Hmost anti-spam
software because that is not anything near multipart/alternative.

--
Peter Peters

Re: current/modern email netiquette

Peter Peters wrote:

>I remember the days where you had to pay 50 (or 5) for every kB of
>e-mail. In those cases you wouldn't dare to include 90% (like today
>seems usual) overhead in making it look "nice".

Yes, I remember those days as well. Please see my other replies in
this topic where I have already answered this point in detail.

current/modern email netiquette: signatures

TP> Hmm, in your previous post you refer to your "Myths"
TP> webpage that references the GNKSA at one point,

It does not. It hyperlinks to the GNKSOA:MUA requirements.

TP> yet here you ignore Son ofRFC1036 and GNKSA's
TP> recommendations about sigdashes.

.... which is because ...

TP> we're talking about mail as opposed to usenet.

There you go.

There's no mention of sigdashes in the GNSKA:MUA requirements.

current/modern email netiquette: text/html bodyparts

JdeBP> message-myths-dispelled.html>

TP> I don't see how you can say they don't waste
TP> bandwidth compared to plain text. [...]

That's a straw man. Please read what the page _actually_ says.

current/modern email netiquette: text/html bodyparts

AC> The logic of the html rendering programs seems to be: start
AC> courier 10 point, make it blue blah blah. Then: end of
AC> paragraph so switch it all off. Then: start courier 10 point
AC> etc etc. And that is in a message thatdoesn't actually
AC> have any formatting that the sender knows about as
AC> he has just typed in text!
AC>
AC> But, as I'm sure JdeBP would say, those are not the fault of html
per se.

Indeed. There are some bad composition programs Out There. But,
equally, there are some reasonably good ones, too. Mozilla's message
composition tool doesn't add in explicit fonts like that, for
example. As M. Hirose noted, it's the quality of the MUAs that's the
problem, not the data format.

Re: current/modern email netiquette

David F. Skoll wrote:

> I think the only thing you can do is try to educate people:
>
> 1) HTML mail is more likely to be flagged as spam.
>
> 2) The prevalence of HTML mail makes phishing scams and sneaky spam much
> easier. As good citizens, we shouldn't encourage the use of HTML mail.
>
> 3) There's no guarantee that the HTML mail you send will look the same
> to the recipient as it did when you sent that. If you need absolute
> fidelity of formatted material, use PDF.
>
> However, based on a lot of experience in the e-mail business, I doubt
> these arguments will be very persuasive.

Well, the usual reaction is probably a blank stare ("techie babble, must
not listen"...), and an "It looks perfect on my machine, so it must be
fine", similar to what the Usenet saw from MS Outlook Express users for
so long.

hauke

--
Now without signature.

Re: current/modern email netiquette: text/html bodyparts

J de Boyne Pollard wrote:

> TP> I have resisted this for 8 years, but when asked
> TP> why not, and my answer is because of extra
> TP> bandwidth, html mails look more like
> TP> spam/scams/viruses etc I get these blank looks.
>
> > myths-dispelled.html>
>
> As well you should.

Debatable. The page you reference comes with quite a bit of FUD itself.

Read "The myth about digests", and then go and visit any mailing-list
web archive messed up to the point of being unusable by html mail (and
top posters, I may add).

hauke


--
Now without signature.