On 13/01/2019 20:50, Mike Hammett wrote:

People use plain-text e-mail on purpose? I do most of the time.

(*it is frustrating when content parity between HTML and PLAINTEXT sections is e-mails is inconsistent. :/ ) -- Christoffer

On 13/01/2019 21:11, valdis.kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:

Back when we were designing MIME, somebody (Vernon Schryver?) stated that multipart/alternative with text/plain and text/html was *always* incorrect.

-_-

If the two parts are semantically equal, then one is superfluous and doesn't need to be sent. (Remember bandwidth costs in 1992...)

I can imagine.

If the two parts aren't semantically equal, then one part is deficient at best and actively misleading at worst, and should not be sent.

In 2019 I would hope this are not the case. Cause Cheap Bandwidth compared to the 90'ies. Still not always the case. Sadly. :/ -Christoffer

Whenever someone has a "experience" while reading an e-mail message or viewing a web page, one has to wonder what sort of drugs they are on ... It is the LSD that provides the "experience", not whether you are viewing an e-mail message or a web-page-over-SMTP ... Please experience the wonders of the top-quote. See your local psychedelic distributor if you are somehow not "experiencing" anything ... --- The fact that there's a Highway to Hell but only a Stairway to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic volume.

-----Original Message----- From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Owen DeLong Sent: Monday, 14 January, 2019 15:22 To: Valdis Kletnieks Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: (Netflix/GlobalConnect a/s) Scheduled Open Connect Appliance upgrade is starting

...

On Jan 13, 2019, at 12:11 PM, valdis.kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2019 20:55:54 +0100, Christoffer Hansen said:

...

(*it is frustrating when content parity between HTML and PLAINTEXT sections is e-mails is inconsistent. :/ )

Back when we were designing MIME, somebody (Vernon Schryver?) stated that multipart/alternative with text/plain and text/html was *always* incorrect.

If the two parts are semantically equal, then one is superfluous and doesn't need to be sent. (Remember bandwidth costs in 1992...)

If the two parts aren't semantically equal, then one part is deficient at best and actively misleading at worst, and should not be sent.

This involves a number of erroneous assumptions, IMHO…

1. All recipients have the ability to consume either form. 2. HTML cannot offer a better experience to some recipients while remaining semantically equivalent to the plain text content. 3. The improved recipient experience afforded by HTML has no value beyond what can be done in plain text. 4. The cost of bandwidth will remain fixed at 1992 levels.

While I’m not a huge fan of the various forms of rich text for most emails, I do acknowledge that they do sometimes have merit and that in those cases, having a plain-text alternative included in the message for backwards compatibility with less capable or automated email consumers is, IMHO, preferable to not having it and consumes very little bandwidth by today’s standards.

Owen

+1 Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 14, 2019, at 10:37 PM, Stephen Satchell <list@satchell.net> wrote:

...

On 1/14/19 7:14 PM, Keith Medcalf wrote: Please experience the wonders of the top-quote. See your local psychedelic distributor if you are somehow not "experiencing" anything ...

I experience a savings in time with non-edited top quoting. If I don't see meaningful new content within the first 20 lines, I ignore it as worthless...unless it's a topic I'm following closely.

And, yes, I use a text-only mail reader. I don't like HTML mail, because it's an attack vector for ne'er-do-wells. As long as the mail reader allows "self-clicking" URLs, just NO.

On Sun, Jan 13, 2019 at 01:50:58PM -0600, Mike Hammett wrote:

People use plain-text e-mail on purpose?

Are you trying to start another flame war? But to answer your question, yes. - Brian

Check with the contacts listed on their PeeringDB entry. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions Midwest Internet Exchange The Brothers WISP ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christoffer Hansen" <christoffer@netravnen.de> To: Brian@ampr.org, nanog@ics-il.net Cc: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2019 2:01:20 PM Subject: Re: plaintext email? On 13/01/2019 20:57, Brian Kantor wrote:

Are you trying to start another flame war?

I certainly hope to avoid this discussion currently! (back to 1) @NETFLIX: Anybody willing to listen to previous stated comment and take action on it? - Christoffer

On Sun, Jan 13, 2019 at 01:50:58PM -0600, Mike Hammett wrote:

People use plain-text e-mail on purpose?

Yes. James R. Cutler James.cutler@consultant.com GPG keys: hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net

On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 11:58 AM Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> wrote:

...

...

People use plain-text e-mail on purpose? Yes.

only if you want other people to be able to read it

Isn't the underlying assumption with non-plaintext that: "I know what will work better for you than you do" (comic-sans, colors, contrasting...) Don't email users configure their client to display such that it helps them process mail more easily? why would you force your ideas of contrast/color-blindness/etc on other folks? :( There are several folk I refuse mail from at this point because they just don't get "I can't see your html email". oh well... I suppose procmail does exist for a reason. -chris

On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 12:12:34PM -0500, Christopher Morrow wrote:

Isn't the underlying assumption with non-plaintext that: "I know what will work better for you than you do"

I suspect that the increasing use of very long lines in the expectation that the recipient's mail client will wrap them "appropriately" leads to mail clients reformatting and wrapping lines in complete disregard for the formatting that the sender used. For example, the previous paragraph was sent consisting of four lines. If it didn't display that way for you, your mail client may have reformatted it. Had I wanted to use the formatting to convey some information, that would have been lost. A quote from many years ago that I feel is still relevant: "Good spelling, punctuation, and formatting are essentially the on-line equivalent of bathing." -- Elf Sternberg - Brian

In article <CAL9jLaYkVVoE3j5dohE+SDLkXYhX=FA0eO8zNihUtA1M9AcTLQ@mail.gmail.com> you write:

Isn't the underlying assumption with non-plaintext that: "I know what will work better for you than you do" ...

No, it's that every MUA in the world has handled html mail for a decade and it's a waste of time to piss into the wind. I send most of my mail as unformatted text, but my MUA (alpine) renders incoming HTML just fine. Time to get over it and waste time arguing about something else pointless, like when to capitalize internet. R's, John

I'd like to go on record as saying that I PREFER top-posting. Why dig through what you've already read to see the new comments? Actually in an ideal world previous included bits would be links which could optionally be expanded via one shared remote copy but lo I wander. You should try some of the internet governance (I know, oxymoron) lists where people will inline a megabyte of discussion to add just "+1!" or "I agree!" or "congrats!" in the middle or bottom. It's like Alice's Restaurant. "The purpose of time is to prevent everything from happening at once" Somehow that seems to apply to this. On January 14, 2019 at 16:28 morrowc.lists@gmail.com (Christopher Morrow) wrote:

well we COULD argue about 'inline comment' or 'top posting' ... 

-- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*

On 1/14/19 11:40 PM, valdis.kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:

And if people trimmed the quoted material so only the parts being replied to are left, there's not much digging involved.

    That would really be nice, but people are inherintly lazy and will not invest the few seconds to make reading easier.     I know if I see a bunch of quotes I am more inclined to delete the email than read it. Port 26...

Why must there be a hard rule about top posting? If the replied to message(s) comprise a long logical sequence, the OCD among us experience cognitive dissonance if the order is “un-natural”. Thus bottom posting continues the “natural” sequence and makes life easier for many of us who otherwise would have difficulty maintaining context. If a quoted message is concise, either by origin or by quoting only a salient point, top posting is not inappropriate. Context is nearby. If the quoted message asks a series of questions, interspersed answers provide bottom posting on a per question basis which clearly indicates the relation of each reply segment to the appropriate segment. Again, this assists many of us in maintaining context. If the reply is done from a tiny-screen as on an iPhone, context of long messages is impossible to maintain and, anyway, top posting is the default. This whole argument is analogous to rigorously not aligning braces in C code because Ritchie did it. Or rigorously aligning braces in C code to make comprehending easier. This reply is deliberately top posted with the reference material as a short appendix. It is in plain text so rendering has no browser dependancies and the archived version remains readable. James R. Cutler James.cutler@consultant.com GPG keys: hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 8:39 PM <valdis.kletnieks@vt.edu <mailto:valdis.kletnieks@vt.edu>> wrote: A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail? And now you're sitting here wondering what possible relevance that might have to some line or other - the only context you have at this point is that it's a reply to something you wrote. Actually, at this point you don't even have that. So you may have read this entire thing and now you're still wondering what possible relevance it may have to the thread. On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 00:24:30 -0500, bzs@theworld.com <mailto:bzs@theworld.com> said:

Why dig through what you've already read to see the new comments?

Or you can put the comment after, so everybody who reads text top to bottom has the context. I'm not away of any languages or writing systems that work from bottom to top, so that's pretty much everybody. And if people trimmed the quoted material so only the parts being replied to are left, there's not much digging involved.

...

Why must there be a hard rule about top posting?

It is my belief that whether to 'top post' or 'bottom post' may largely depend on the characteristics of the medium. In USENET, bottom posting was preferred because messages often arrived out of order, and occasionally did not arrive at all, thus supplying the context of the reply before the reply itself would argueably increase the chance that a reply would be fully understood. Conversations might span days with only a very few contributions each day, and the context could be helpful. In modern Internet email, messages rarely are delayed very much, and rarely are lost in transit. In that environment, top posting allows someone who has been following the discussion closely may continue to follow it without the distraction of having to page past repeated text which he or she has already read and digested. But against simply omitting that context, at the bottom, it is there for those who would like to refresh their memory of previously-discussed points or for whom the mail did not arrive, or arrived late or out of order. Interleaved posting, such as might be used in a question-and-answer message, has a number of advantages over strict adherence to 'top' or 'bottom' exclusively. Conclusion: it pays to be versatile. - Brian

In article <35D88832-1031-4979-BD93-47983E18DCCC@consultant.com> you write:

-=-=-=-=-=-

Why must there be a hard rule about top posting?

Because we're nerds and whatever made sense in 1983 still make sense today, because nothing has changed. By the way, have you changed and memorized all your passwords for this month yet? R's, John

Email for personal use is turning rare. And people need to use *bold* in text more than not. So most clients are configured to send html by default, and people have no reasons to change that. I think LISTSERV software used to require plain text to send commands like subscribe, but I think they made their parser accept html mails and still find the commands. On 2019, nobody cares if you uses plain text or html in emails. If somebody write a bot that accept commands through email (like a GETWEB gateway) is very easy to make it accept html and flat it to text. -- -- ℱin del ℳensaje.

Re: Top Posting To me it depends on whether there's any chance the reader won't know what precisely you're responding to in which case in-line is warranted. I don't have any quoted text in this msg (is that top posting?), is anyone lost? THE REAL REASON for my responding at all is because there are people who lurk and sometimes manage lists who will react angrily, often in private email (cowards! :-) ), to a top-post as if you violated some inarguable rule and you maybe should be banned or at the very least are very rude, similar in tone to if you'd spammed the list or whatever. I just thought I'd point out it's just a formatting opinion, a judgement call by whoever is responding, and nothing more, it's not some rule everyone accepts so lose the self-righteous tone. If anything I suspect it might have to do with the MUA one uses. Maybe, at the very least, accept that the person who top-posted is looking at a very different layout than you are, one where that top-post looks just fine? I use Emacs/VM for email. It's quite good at, for example, splitting the screen so I can look ahead (or behind) in the message if I've lost track of some context, or even opening multiple related msgs (even if already filed) simultaneously to go back and review what's been said already, or forward even to see if one is about to say something which has already been adequately addressed. It's probably quite a bit different than the one-way upside-down (date-wise) scrolling on some vendor-supplied smartphone app. I've used them when I've had nothing else and I haven't a clue how one can do much else than essentially "more" thru the latest, silo'd, 10^9 spams interspersed with the occasional bit of ham 20 lines at a time so I guess I can understand why some become desperate and angry to get others to format their email for their convenience. Maybe your problem isn't the top-posting but your lousy MUA? -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*

Warning —top posting also with interspersed comments. 👍🏻 <— that’s a thumbs up

On Jan 15, 2019, at 1:36 PM, bzs@theworld.com wrote:

Re: Top Posting

To me it depends on whether there's any chance the reader won't know what precisely you're responding to in which case in-line is warranted.

I don't have any quoted text in this msg (is that top posting?), is anyone lost?

THE REAL REASON for my responding at all is because there are people who lurk and sometimes manage lists who will react angrily, often in private email (cowards! :-) ), to a top-post as if you violated some inarguable rule and you maybe should be banned or at the very least are very rude, similar in tone to if you'd spammed the list or whatever.

I am appalled at the nastiness regarding posting prejudices. "But, but, if your cognitive processes do not match mine, you are an idiot.” “Why should I love my neighbor as myself? I am so much better"

I just thought I'd point out it's just a formatting opinion, a judgement call by whoever is responding, and nothing more, it's not some rule everyone accepts so lose the self-righteous tone.

If anything I suspect it might have to do with the MUA one uses.

Maybe, at the very least, accept that the person who top-posted is looking at a very different layout than you are, one where that top-post looks just fine?

And the viewer/replier may have significantly different cognitive skills.

I use Emacs/VM for email. It's quite good at, for example, splitting the screen so I can look ahead (or behind) in the message if I've lost track of some context, or even opening multiple related msgs (even if already filed) simultaneously to go back and review what's been said already, or forward even to see if one is about to say something which has already been adequately addressed.

It's probably quite a bit different than the one-way upside-down (date-wise) scrolling on some vendor-supplied smartphone app.

I've used them when I've had nothing else and I haven't a clue how one can do much else than essentially "more" thru the latest, silo'd, 10^9 spams interspersed with the occasional bit of ham 20 lines at a time so I guess I can understand why some become desperate and angry to get others to format their email for their convenience.

Maybe your problem isn't the top-posting but your lousy MUA?

Or, perhaps, attitude?

-- -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*

James R. Cutler James.cutler@consultant.com GPG keys: hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net

On 01/15/2019 11:37 AM, bzs@theworld.com wrote:

P.S. No, you already read the quoted text, that's how it got to be quoted text.

Are you making reference to having read the quoted text in a different email? An email that someone might not have received, much less read yet? -- Grant. . . . unix || die

On Tue, 2019-01-15 at 00:24 -0500, bzs@theworld.com wrote:

I'd like to go on record as saying that I PREFER top-posting.

Why dig through what you've already read to see the new comments?

Because in long discussion threads, you lose the context to exactly what a particular person is replying to/about. When they answer inline (or bottom posting if there is just one thing to say) you get the context as to what they are talking about.

Actually in an ideal world previous included bits would be links which could optionally be expanded via one shared remote copy but lo I wander.

Right. So you are actually advocating for inline/bottom-posting with appropriate trimming and the added benefit of being able to collapse the trimmed quote. That could very well and easily be an MUA feature. But you started your message by saying you prefer top posting.

You should try some of the internet governance (I know, oxymoron) lists where people will inline a megabyte of discussion to add just "+1!" or "I agree!" or "congrats!" in the middle or bottom. It's like Alice's Restaurant.

That's a different problem that IMHO, top posting actually perpetuates: lack of trimming. Top posting makes it too easy to send along the entire copies of all of the messages that previous top-posters posted and didn't trim. When you encourage inline replying or bottom posting, it seems to point out, only if slightly more, than one could trim the useless content as one goes by it to inline/bottom post. Cheers, b.

Sudden plot-twist! A small elite group of NANOG participants have been using stenographic forms of encryption in the messages all along! On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 1:06 PM Bryan Fields <Bryan@bryanfields.net> wrote:

On 1/15/19 12:24 AM, bzs@theworld.com wrote:

...

I'd like to go on record as saying that I PREFER top-posting.

It's like having an @aol.com address.

-- Bryan Fields

727-409-1194 - Voice http://bryanfields.net

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 5:07 PM Aled Morris via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org> wrote:

You can hide your secret message by writing:

dash dash space return

Followed by your message.

It’ll be hidden from all but the Internet illuminati

-- is that true?

Aled

On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 at 22:00, cosmo <clinton.mielke@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Sudden plot-twist!

A small elite group of NANOG participants have been using stenographic forms of encryption in the messages all along!

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 1:06 PM Bryan Fields <Bryan@bryanfields.net> wrote:

...

On 1/15/19 12:24 AM, bzs@theworld.com wrote:

...

I'd like to go on record as saying that I PREFER top-posting.

It's like having an @aol.com address.

...

-- Bryan Fields

727-409-1194 - Voice http://bryanfields.net

On January 15, 2019 at 13:58 clinton.mielke@gmail.com (cosmo) wrote:

Sudden plot-twist!

A small elite group of NANOG participants have been using stenographic forms of encryption in the messages all along! 

Did you mean steganographic? I only ask because someone might learn something if they have the right term, it's an interesting topic for those who are interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*

You're way too close to the truth. The steganographic code is based on typos..... (bit rate is rather shit) Now you must be .... Elluminated On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 9:06 PM John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:

...

...

Sudden plot-twist!

A small elite group of NANOG participants have been using stenographic forms of encryption in the messages all along!

Did you mean steganographic?

No, stenographic, like, you know, double rot13.

R's, John

On Sunday, 13 January, 2019 12:51, Mike Hammet wrote:

People use plain-text e-mail on purpose?

There is another kind of e-mail? Or are you referring to Web-Pages-over-SMTP?

I’m fine with HTML emails to some extent (mainly the inclusion of clickable links) but I am not a fan of formatting. Not to name any names, but there are a few people on this list that for whatever reason use different fonts or sizes. I like having all of my text the same size because I can then use the features built into my email client to change the size as I need for my eyes and the screen I am using. I am also able to change the font when the email does not already specify one. More importantly, what is the need to use a different font in your emails? One of the people that I converse with outside of this list uses a cursive font which is also in a different color. It’s very hard to read and I see no need for it at all. The final reason that I dislike some HTML emails is because my email reader has a dark mode which is much more easy on the eyes. Some formatting, though I am unsure what (it appears to me imbedded images), causes the email to display with a white background instead of the dark gray that normally shows. This is both not nice to look at and out of place with the other emails. While I don’t use a plain text email reader myself, I know that they are still commonly in use and have their place. One example of where I personally use one is on a terminal where I am automatically sending emails to interact with some email based systems. Thanks ~ Bryce Wilson, AS202313, EVIX, AS137933/AS209762

On Jan 13, 2019, at 2:15 PM, Matt Hoppes <mattlists@rivervalleyinternet.net> wrote:

Yes Mike, All of my email clients are set to plain text only.

Email is for text. Not HTML. Not incredimail. You know that :)

On Jan 13, 2019, at 14:50, Mike Hammett <nanog@ics-il.net> wrote:

...

People use plain-text e-mail on purpose?

----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions

Midwest Internet Exchange

The Brothers WISP

From: "Christoffer Hansen" <christoffer@netravnen.de> To: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2019 1:46:08 PM Subject: Fwd: (Netflix/GlobalConnect a/s) Scheduled Open Connect Appliance upgrade is starting

Sent to NANOG,

Anyone from NETFLIX subscribed?

Could you please fix the below type notification e-mails to ALSO be available if one ONLY USES PLAIN-TEXT email clients?

Currently the notice information is formatted in such a way the PLAIN-TEXT section is completely EMPTY. ONLY the HTML section contains information.

(E-mail client on my case is Thunderbird)

-- Cheers

Christoffer

-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: (Netflix/***) Scheduled Open Connect Appliance upgrade is starting Resent-From: *** Date: *** Jan 2019 *** From: Netflix <info@mailer.netflix.com> Reply-To: no_reply@netflix.com To: ***

Netflix

Hello ***,

The scheduled upgrade of your Open Connect Appliance(s) (OCAs) is beginning now. The list of affected appliances is:

IP Address Name Facility *** *** ***

<!-- clipped -->

On Sun, Jan 13, 2019 at 06:01:24PM -0800, Seth Mattinen wrote:

That's the primary reason I am plain text only: people that think they're being whimsical by picking fonts and colors that are hard to read.

Now if only we could get everyone to stop top-posting.

On Sun, 13 Jan 2019 20:01:20 -0800, Brian Kantor said:

Clearly, editing inclusions is a lost art. - Brian

The September That Never Ended was so long ago that pretty much everybody from before that event is now well into "get off my lawn" territory.

On 1/13/19 8:01 PM, Brian Kantor wrote:

Clearly, editing inclusions is a lost art.

No, it isn't a lost art. As you can see, there are some of us who know perfectly well how to edit, and have e-mail tools that make this easy. (Using Thunderbird here.) Smartphone mail programs make excerpting a hard task, by the nature of the human interface. Making matters worse, Joe SixPack and Suzie Latchhook are not taught to do it, because of a despicable lack of BOFH personnel. (Time to take my gout meds.)

Yes. It’s still a very effective anti spam technique. Sent from my iCar

On Jan 13, 2019, at 2:50 PM, Mike Hammett <nanog@ics-il.net> wrote:

People use plain-text e-mail on purpose?

----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions

Midwest Internet Exchange

The Brothers WISP

From: "Christoffer Hansen" <christoffer@netravnen.de> To: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2019 1:46:08 PM Subject: Fwd: (Netflix/GlobalConnect a/s) Scheduled Open Connect Appliance upgrade is starting

Sent to NANOG,

Anyone from NETFLIX subscribed?

Could you please fix the below type notification e-mails to ALSO be available if one ONLY USES PLAIN-TEXT email clients?

Currently the notice information is formatted in such a way the PLAIN-TEXT section is completely EMPTY. ONLY the HTML section contains information.

(E-mail client on my case is Thunderbird)

-- Cheers

Christoffer

-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: (Netflix/***) Scheduled Open Connect Appliance upgrade is starting Resent-From: *** Date: *** Jan 2019 *** From: Netflix <info@mailer.netflix.com> Reply-To: no_reply@netflix.com To: ***

Netflix

Hello ***,

The scheduled upgrade of your Open Connect Appliance(s) (OCAs) is beginning now. The list of affected appliances is:

IP Address Name Facility *** *** ***

<!-- clipped -->