On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 5:24 AM, Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info>wrote:
> Alexander Etter wrote: > > Ah I know of what you mentioned. On an GNU Emacs mailing list I was >> advised to avoid anything but plaintext. It just seems so archaic. But I'm >> a novice and will learn why eventually. >> > > There's a number of reasons. In no particular order, and in all cases > "you" is generic you, not you personally. > > * Mastery of your tools. Are you the master of your tools, or are they the > master of you? If the writer can't turn off HTML mail in common mail > clients, there is little hope that he can control a compiler, an editor, > source control, etc. And if he *won't* turn it off, that shows laziness and > carelessness to others that reflects badly. Especially in the open source > coding community, including here, your reputation is worth more than gold. > > * Code is plain text. Editors sometimes use colour and formatting to > highlight parts of the code, but fundamentally, programming is about > reading and writing code. If you need fancy fonts and formatting and > dancing paperclips to get your message across, chances are you will never > be more than a mediocre programmer. > > * Mail client independence. The people you are writing to use a wide > variety of mail clients, under many different circumstances. They might be > logged into a Unix server with only a primitive command-line mail app; they > might be using mutt, or Thunderbird, or Outlook, or possibly not even > reading it via mail at all, but via a newsgroup on Usenet. All of these > programs may display your message differently. You have no control over the > presentation that the user will see -- best to make the fewest assumptions, > namely, plain text, and not rely on features which may be missing. > > * Your readers may be colour blind, and your red and green lines may look > identical. Or they may be completely blind, and using a screen reader. Or > they might prefer to disable HTML emails, and avoid all the dangers and > problems with it (security vulnerabilities, privacy breaches, and the > rest). Or they might be sick and tired of straining to reading crappy > emails with light blue text on a slightly darker blue background. Either > way, your formatting is lost. Don't expect people to turn on HTML display > just for you. > > * Layout of code (especially Python code) is special. Your mail client may > mangle the layout. It is very common to see code posted where all > indentation is lost, or even line breaks, so everything is squashed into a > single line: > > def func(a, b): while b < 100: print b b += 1 print a-b > > Or every line is separated by a blank line, which makes it a PITA to paste > into the interactive interpreter. Even if the reader can fix the mangling, > they shouldn't have to. > > > -- > Steven > > ______________________________**_________________ > Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org > To unsubscribe or change subscription options: > http://mail.python.org/**mailman/listinfo/tutor<http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor> > Thanks for the clarity Steven. -- Alexander 7D9C597B
_______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
