plain text only policy prohibits the use of android based mobile devices

hi,

Due to the existing policy about plain text only messages accepted by the list it is impossible to send an email from any mobile device using gmail native app. The problem is that Google for some reason doesn't include plain text email sending as a configurable feature in Android v2+ and only sends multipart HTML and plain text messages from Android 3.1+ devices (AKA Honeycomb tablets)

The necessity to use the desktop in order to send a message to the list is annoying and not quite contemporary.

In the same time this policy doesn't seem to cut off SPAM effectively as I'm getting plenty of different emails of stupid nature with git majordomo or whatever it is signature inside.

Can the filter be made smarter to accept at least the messages from Honeycomb devices 3.1+? Is there any other steps that can be made to make the list more mobile-friendly?

Thanks, Eugene

On 05/18/2011 03:03 PM, Eugene Sajine wrote: [...]

That sounds mostly like a bug in the mail client you are using. K-9 Mail for instance allows for this. I'd report the lack of plain text to your e-mail client provider, I.E. Google.

Not to be snarky or anything, but the "contemporary" thing these days is to use forums and twitter, which really don't make good development arenas.

That is a war that the side of "good" will ultimately lose at though, SPAM will win no matter what we do, we just have to hold off as much as we can.

Asking on the list isn't going to be all that helpful, if for no other reason than the actual list administrators aren't on it. My guess is that the answer is going to be 'no' or to use a mail client that properly supports plain-text, like K-9 for instance.

That said I've CC'ed postmaster so that your concerns are actually seen by the people who might be able to help you, or at least explain the reasons behind what's going on better.

- John 'Warthog9' Hawley

From: "J.H." <warthog9@eaglescrag.net>
Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 15:16:11 -0700

This policy is definitely not changing, plain text only.

Fix your email client.

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 6:19 PM, David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:

That sounded grumpy - did i step on a blister? I'm going to fix the GMAIL right now;)

Anyway thanks for the prompt answer.

Eugene

So the list should change just because your mail client is broken?

-- http://yosemitenews.info/

I would put it like this. It is not only my client but the default client of an army of different devices. And while i do agree it might be considered broken, i was looking for possibility to accommodate those devices without affecting the list's spam protection mechanisms.

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 6:17 PM,  <ellis@spinics.net> wrote:

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 6:25 PM, Eugene Sajine <euguess@gmail.com> wrote:

sorry for top post and please read "i would put it" as "I wouldn't put it"

Thanks, Eugene

On Wed, 18 May 2011, ellis@spinics.net wrote:

if the client is sending out multipart mail with both a HTML and a text portion, then having the list accept the text portion and strip the HTML portion off seems like a reasonable request.

I am very much a text e-mail person (I use pine almost exclusivly), but this doesn't seem that bad.

David Lang

Reasonable, or no, it would involve changes in the way vger handles the mailing lists and that is very unlikely to happen. These lists have a long tradition of being plain text and there is also a long tradition of not changing how things work just because somebody comes along with a broken client. IMNSHO changing the list to fix a broken client will only serve to encourage more broken clients. And that would not be a Good Thing.

-- http://yosemitephotos.net/

I'm afraid I must concur. Whilst people are free to use whatever clients they wish, if vger opens the gates now, you'll have people thinking that if they whine enough, they can get their broken client supported.

Unnecessary work; and it would encourage broken clients.

() ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments
 		 	   		  

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 7:14 PM,  <david@lang.hm> wrote:

That is exactly what I'm thinking about. IMHO multipart message is completely valid format and list could preserve its integrity by just pulling out the plain text part of the message. And it doesn't matter which client I'm using and if it is broken or not. I think that the gmail client of android 2+ and 3.0+ is in fact broken in that regard, but the one from 3.1+ is not. That's is why i was not asking about "openning up the gates for broken clients" and allowing HTML content. I'm talking specifically about 3.1+ android versions that will inherit this gmail client behavior and they are coming soon.

Now I posted this to the list for few reasons:
1. If only one person contacts list admins about such matter - he will
get the answer i got up in the thread. Within a blink of an eye.
2. I wanted to run it by list to understand if there are others who
are annoyed by the way this policy works and to get their input. Do
they think the list could accommodate the multipart messages or they
just using some other clients or they just don't care.

As of now i see the majority doesn't care, so it is up to me to decide how I'm going to work with this.

Many thanks for the feedback about this bikeshedding issue.

Eugene

Eugene Sajine <euguess@gmail.com> writes:

I only comment on this part. The way I read this thread is not that the majority doesn't care.

The majority deeply cares about keeping the list free of HTML cruft, much more than they care about making it easier for people who sometimes (or always) cannot send anything but HTML-mixed messages [*1*].

[Footnote]

*1* This includes me, who often has only an Android tablet while on a bus, wanting to give advice to a poster on the list. I usually just send the reply only to the original poster without bothering the rest of the list, or wait until I get to somewhere I have access to a better MUA.

On Thu, 19 May 2011, Junio C Hamano wrote:

to be clear, I also want to keep HTML cruft off the list.

but if a message is being sent in a multipart format of both HTML and text, I think it is reasonable to strip out the HTML part and send the text part on to the list.

David Lang

Please send such requests to the list admins at vger.kernel.org directly. I do not think people that are active on this list do not have much influence on the filtering policy, and also I suspect not many list admins read this list to trawl for request like this.

Having said that, I personally would not want to see non-text messages myself, even though I often find myself not having any access to the list but via gmail and I find it quite limiting. But I tend to consider that not allowing pure text messages is a gmail bug/misfeature and needs to be fixed not by allowing html cruft on the list, but by enabling poor gmail users to send pure text when they want to.

Yes, I sit in Mountain View, but I suspect that pure text messages are not anywhere near the top of the task list of the people who run gmail, and I know I do not have much influence on that matter, either.

Junio> Please send such requests to the list admins at vger.kernel.org Junio> directly. I do not think people that are active on this list do Junio> not have much influence on the filtering policy, and also I Junio> suspect not many list admins read this list to trawl for request Junio> like this.

Junio!  You underestimate the power of bikeshedding!

:-)

On Wed, May 18 2011, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Doesn't clicking on "Plain text" work? There are several people on lkml (includng Linus, I believe) who use gmail.

There doesn't appear to be a way to make it the default, which is annoying, but it is possible.

David

David Brown <davidb@codeaurora.org> writes:

The WebMail interface let's you do that, but that is not what is discussed here (see the original message from Eugene).

On phones and Honeycomb tablet, no. The app gives "Reply Inline" and "Include Original" control, and when both are active, the user is fooled into thinking it would be sent in the text/plain, but it always seems to send mixed.