on Mon, Dec 09, 2019 at 09:50:14AM +0100, Maarten Oelering via mailop wrote: > Multipart messages with html and text alternatives are generally > considered best practice. Senders with html templates should add a > text version is the common believe.
Well, the common belief is more like "what's multipart"? :-) > But it's almost 2020, and we were wondering if there's still a good > reason for adding plain text to a html message. Is there a significant > audience reading in plain text? I'm reading this in mutt, but I'm probably not a significant audience unless your audience is defined as people who still like plain text, such as, oh, hey, maybe mailop or nanog or anywhere else filled with grizzled old hangers-on to decades-old technology biases. Caveat: back in the Day I helped argue for the foundation of what is now known as "responsive design" in Web design, so I have a standpoint. > Is plain text important for accessibility? Again, that's a whole 'nother can of worms. I started out in SGML and taught myself the HTML of the day in a few minutes, and so believe that it is certainly /possible/ to write HTML that it readable by the tools that make such accessible, but as to whether anyone (or any tools) know how or care to know how to do that anymore? Shrug. So, provide a plain text alternative, preferably one you've actually tried to read in a client like mutt. A significant number of those clients and tools I've seen people using to send multipart mail don't understand why stripping ALL of the newlines and mashing down spaces makesithardertoread.YMMV. An example of this (created by yahoo mail, IIUIC) from a post to a local neighborhood mailing list, sent by someone describing a house on our upcoming historic district tour, cut and pasted from mutt and reformatted only to indent for legibility and wrap to ~76c: 703N. East St. Nowell-Forbes house 1923Naudain MachenThisNeoclassical Revival house was built for developer Virginia Nowell. From 1941to 1989 it was the home of Harry Forbes, an engineer with the Seaboard Air LineRailway, and his family. The house was restored and expanded for the currentowner in 2005. The interior is beautifully lit by large windows, surrounded bystained-wood trim. The retaining wall at the front of the property is built ofBelgian block stones. Behind the house is a 5,000-gallon pool wherein reside 21koi. Each item it also jammed together so the next line starts immediately: 609 Polk St. Forrest-Crew House 1897Lyric Thompson& Lee LilleyThisand five other houses on this block were originally identical four-room QueenAnne-style I dunno, seems like we'd have figured the basics out by now. > Because SpamAssassin says so? Doesn't hurt. How about "because the following makes you look really stupid": Actual example from this month, and I'm a past customer and in the market for a fresh prescription update: Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2019 04:27:15 +0000 (UTC) From: "Eyeglasses.com" <customerserv...@email.eyeglasses.com> To: scham...@hesketh.com Subject: It's Black Friday, FREE LENSES That's all I can see in mutt. Not even a "your mail client sucks" or "click on the URL to view this message in a web browser" disclaimer. I know, I should get a different account for all the vendors who send me stuff with ~1K char click-tracker redirects and just read and manage them in an HTML-capable client, but I'd rather know what I'm actually looking at, not just what the rendering engine decided to show me. JADP, Steve -- hesketh.com/inc. v: +1(919)834-2552 f: +1(919)834-2553 w: http://hesketh.com/ Internet security and antispam hostname intelligence: http://enemieslist.com/ _______________________________________________ mailop mailing list mailop@mailop.org https://chilli.nosignal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mailop
