> Compression reduces the size but it's proportionnal so don't negate the
> extra html size. The global size will always be 4-10x.
No, the compression is not proportional. HTML is naturally very
redundant, and machine-generated HTML like the one seen in Richard's
email tends to be excruciatingly redundant, so it compresses even much
better than plain text. Plus the part of the plain/text that's in
common with the text/html (i.e. the actual useful part) would usually be
recognized as a redundancy, so all in all you'll typically get a much
smaller size difference after compression.
Of course, that's if compression takes place, which is not necessarily
the case. In practice, for most emails like the ones exchanged on this
mailing-list, the precise size of the message is largely irrelevant:
even if multiplied by 10x, the cost of the actual content is lost in the
noise of the rest of the protocol.
Stefan
