Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 20:11:45 -0400
From: John C Klensin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> The practice of sending both HTML and cleartext of supposedly
>> the same message reflects very poorly on those who do it
>> intentionally and on those who cause MUA's to trick others
>> into doing it unintentionally. Never mind the security
>>...
> So why does multipart/alternative exist?
(i) For those few situations in which there is information
content in a "rich" fancy display form that cannot be rendered
in a weaker form that where it is important to get some idea of
the content through.
It seems to be usually the case, for most messages that I've seen, that
there's *no* added value to the HTML version. I.e., other than adding
<BR> at the end of lines, and using microsoft-specific font settings at
the beginning of each paragraph (usually all the same), there's nothing
to be gained by using HTML except for bloating the message.
So one question to ask is "why send HTML at all" in those cases? It
would be nice if MUA's could detect this case, and only send plain-text,
and reserve HTML only for when it's actually adding something of value.
This is clearly a judgement call on the part of the sender, but the
usual mindless attachment of an HTML part to a plain-text message (to
which I assume that Vernon is most strongly objecting) doesn't add
any more information, just a bit of formatting that the receiving MUA
could probably figure out from a text message if the developer and
user were adequately motivated.
I wonder how many people are still using plain-text, non-HTML enabled
mail readers? It still happens on some mailing list, where someone will
send a base-64 encoded html'ified message (usually using MS Outlook),
and someone will send back "try again in English; I don't read that MIME
crap."
For a long time, if you wanted to guarantee that messages issued by your
MUA would be read, it was wise to send it both in plain-text and HTML
form, with the plain-text form first --- and non-base-64 encoded if at
all possible. For certain recipients, this is still the case.
- Ted
