Re: HTML for email

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 02-Mar-21 13:42, John Levine wrote:
...> On the other hand, perhaps we could make up our mind first whether formatted e-mail is a
> part of the way the world works now, or it's a scourge to be stomped out.  Like, you know, NAT.

What we actually do with NAT, although it's undoubtedly the worst invention since white bread, is invent ways of living with it. For the purposes of IETF-style debate via email, we haven't really invented a good way of living with Content-Type: text/html, which is why some discussion threads rapidly become incomprehensible.

That is a technical problem of the kind that the IETF ought to be good at solving, if we tackle it systematically. How to maked threaded commenting work properly when some senders prefer Content-Type: text/html and others prefer Content-Type: text/plain?

(Incidentally, I have been amused to see several messages in my spam bucket recently with the subject "Telefax is the new email".)

   Brian