Mailing List Etiquette was freebsd vs. netbsd

Chris Knipe savage at savage.za.org
Tue Jun 16 12:28:40 UTC 2020


>
>
> > [...] and text based
> > emails with crappy fonts.
>
> I don't understand this. It's rather the other way round
> when you have HTML-based emails that force a specific
> unreadable font face and font size, and your MUA cannot
> be configured for a bigger minimum font size. In text
> mails, it's the _MUA's_ responsibility to offer the best
> font that the user (!) desires; in text-based MUAs, this
> responsibility is moved to the terminal emulator. Luckily,
> both GUI MUAs and terminals today offer you to change the
> font to whatever you want - and this option has been there
> for decades. This is, in my opinion, not a problem with
> the mail (being text), but wuth the MUA (using unusable
> fonts and settings).
>
> Fonts are not a matter of normal text email.
>
> They _can_ be a problem with HTML email.
>
> (I won't discuss in how far a mail client is supposed to
> contain a HTML rendering engine, epsecially in the absence
> of normal multipart "text _and_ HTML" mail generation.)
>

https://imgur.com/a/eW01Zc2   Your own message - a very good example of
what's wrong with it.  Straight from gmail.  In outlook (for example, which
has a narrower reading plane), it will be even worse, as even -more-
scrolling would be required.

We don't use 640x480 monitors anymore (hell, not even our SSH sessions run
at these low resolutions and 80 col / 25 rows anymore) - we're way past
that as well...  Whilst I now have to scroll up and down to read your
message, I could have seen your entire message in one screen without the
need to scroll up and down.

What's the most efficient?  I guess that's a matter of opinion too.

I hear what you are saying, and I am by no means suggesting sending a 200kb
email, with 10mb of HTML embedded in it either, but we are WAY past, 80
col, 25 rows...   It would be interesting to see how 80x25 actually looks
on today's say, 34" monitors (or whatever the entry level monitors are
these days)

-- 

Regards,
Chris Knipe


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