Re: Could we start accepting rich-text postings on the gcc lists?

[Diego Novillo <dnovillo at google dot com>]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 4:41 PM, Richard Kenner
<kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> wrote:

> Similarly for text-only vs. "rich text".  You may argue that there's no
> compatibility issue, but I disagree.  As was pointed out upthread, when
> people use "rich text", they often start to use colors or other mechanisms
> to express themselves, which can now be dependent on the rendering agent
> used to read the email.  Requiring people to express themselves using only
> words seems to me to encourage the sorts of discipline that we require in
> contributors.

We disagree on this point, then.  While rich-text can be abused, it is
not my experience that people do abuse it to the point of making their
postings illegible.  The markings you see commonly used are monospace
font alterations, bolding and lists.  I have noticed no correlation
between the ability to use a markup language and quality of
contributions.

But more than anything, people write plain text with no markups.  It's
just that an increasing number of mail agents are configured by
default to send rich-text.  So, I disagree that we will start seeing
posts with animated gif images, magenta backgrounds and green fonts.

Would you be willing to give it a try?  If we measure any loss in
quality, then we can always flip back to text-only.


Diego.