Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2023 05:54:44 +0100 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au> Cc: white-wolf <white-wolf@blues-softwares.net>, questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: html rich text colored Message-ID: <20230322055444.b2697263.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <9B5F5E1E-555D-4FA8-AFBE-EBBD3A8A7045@nimnet.asn.au> References: <ca17a158b68d6cf2d0c261cc5f4268d5ef367482.camel@blues-softwares.net> <3faa3481-abe3-47cd-f273-2658db42a5bc@gmail.com> <11239785ba0531583f29189b133ceafdcded8aad.camel@blues-softwares.net> <ac194575-8e40-5e19-2478-a69fffbab278@freebsd.org> <5f1028aadd42bcbd89c62e843fc59798c52a0f36.camel@blues-softwares.net> <9B5F5E1E-555D-4FA8-AFBE-EBBD3A8A7045@nimnet.asn.au>
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On Mon, 20 Mar 2023 21:43:47 +1100, Ian Smith wrote: > On 20 March 2023 4:53:49 pm AEDT, white-wolf <white-wolf@blues-softwares.net> wrote: > [...] > > who have no X now on this desktop computer for see html+Markdown ? > > Enough people who this community respects enough not to disrupt? It's not just about reading messages. It's also about replying to them (and malformed HTML can be a hazard to proper quoting and to preserving structure), and it's about message archives, as it has been mentioned. In my opinion, it is important to understand that a modern day mail client that includes a HTML renderer has reached the level of complexity that in ye olden times has been reserved for operating systems. Resource allocation, permission control, sandboxing, 3D accelleration access... this doesn't come for free. Keeping a web-enabled MUA up to date, especially regarding the ongoing discovery of new (and old) security vulnerabilities requires a steady flow in maintenance. On the other hand, reading text is less risky; "less" hasn't required an update for decades. ;-) And it gets worse: Because you want color in your HTML message, _how_ do you want it? A trivial approach would be to use the designated HTML attributes for <span> and <div>, and you could also use <quote> for inlining quotes. Okay so far. But now people (probably correctly) tell you that this is wrong, and you should use CSS for that. Now you have enabled another whole level of complexity. Modern people will then tell you that you're doing it all wrong, and you should use JavaScript. Not pure, of course, but with the lastest frameworks. Bam! A new challenge. No Internet connection? Sorry, you cannot even read your stored messages! ;-) Of course, using HTML properly gives you power of structuring if (!) you use semantic markup instead of microformatting, i. e., "this is a heading" instead of "this is bigger text with underline". However, people often don't use this power. Mailing programs that generate HTML usually also don't. As mentioned above, the simple act of replying to a message and adding statements can distort the whole "HTML landscape" of the original, therefore lead to buggy output to the list. While HTML _could_ be used with its power of semantic markup, HTML generators will typically mess up the whole thing. And... how about you want to include actual HTML tags in your text, for example, you have a question regarding HTML substitution or elimination using sed or awk? You need to pay attention to quoting now. Or use a <pre> environment? And also keep an eye of the usage of other "special symbols" that might be causing undesired effects when used in HTML. HTML isn't a good tool to render code snippets without further effort. With HTML, list participants would probably also use the ability to structure text as they want to. Some use a triple empty line for paragraphing, others a single line, and some prefer indentation, which all is okay, as it adds an individual touch to messages. Some users indent code snippets with tabs, others with spaces. All this doesn't map 1:1 into HTML and requires more work. And just think about "ASCII art" used when someone illustrates their home network to provide context for a question... And don't be fooled about ISO-8859-1 / -15 / UTF-8 and HTML. Depending on the tool used to generate the list message, this can lead to big trouble. Encoding hell is waiting for you, located at Schlatildefracterstrasse in Berlin! :-) There are other uses of mailing lists and their archives: the automated processing. Searching for things, creating categories, using snippets in notes - all this can easily be achieved with pure text. The great thing about text is that it can combine regular text with code and ASCII art without requring anything else than your favorite editor - it doesn't even have to be the one used by your mailing program, because anything it needs to do is generate text. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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