Re: Please change the parameters of this listserv to reject HTML parts

[Valdis Kletnieks <Valdis.Kletnieks () VT EDU>]

On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:53:56 PDT, Kim Cary said:
> This list is the only list I take that allows non-plaintext message
> parts to be transmitted.
>
> The result impedes the flow of information (see below).

Somebody (I believe it was Vern Schryver) made a very interesting case that
the concept of the "multipart/alternative" MIME body type (the most common
use is whith a text/plain and text/htlm of the same info) was innately
flawed, as follows:

1) If the actual semantic information content of the two is the same, then
the text/html is superfluous and should not be sent.

2) If the semantic content is *not* the same (for instance, if the HTML
includes something difficult/impossible to represent in plain text), then
the lacking body part should not be sent, because of the danger of a reader
only seeing the one part and not realizing that information was lacking.

(It should also be noted that Vern is one of the dinosaurs from the days
when RFCs had ascii-art diagrams in them, and as such, isn't much impressed
by the use of HTML just to get <table></table> and the like...)

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