[Tutor] Comment on http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 09:49:46AM +0100, Alan Gauld wrote:

> >>>>>> I don't really see any reason to use less than 79 in 2013.
> >>>>> The reason for preferring shorter lines is to leave room for
> >>>>> the chevrons when the message gets quoted multiple times.
> >>>> That's just crazy
> >>> Maybe but its the reason given
> >> I prefer using different colours the way Outlook does it
> > But that needs rich text and I hate rich text

And it also makes it hard to impossible for the colour blind to tell 
what is quoted how many times.


I wish mail clients would support rich text rather than HTML. There 
actually is a standard for rich text which does not have the 
disadvantages of HTML mail (bloat, security implications, vulnerable to 
malware):

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1896

but of course any form of rich text is vulerable to people with rubbish 
taste screaming in ALL CAPS BOLD ITALIC RED TEXT WITH GREEN UNDERLINED 
SPACES BETWEEN WORDS... 

:-)


Since this is a Python list, I should also mention ReST (ReStructured 
Text), which is the Python standard for generating rich text from plain 
text markup (not to be confused with Markdown, which is another 
competing, but not quite as powerful, standard). ReST has the advantage 
that it is human readable. For example:

This is a header
----------------

This paragraph contains *italic* and **bold** text.

- These are bullet points.
- No kidding.
- Told you it was readable.


I wish mail clients would support rich text using ReST or Markdown. The 
mail client could still include a GUI so you choose formatting commands 
rather than have to type markup.


-- 
Steven