Re: Preferring text/plain over text/html?

[Earl Hood <ehood@hydra.acs.uci.edu>]

On February 8, 2002 at 15:43, Charlie Watts wrote:

> Do you think it's the fault of the MUA or of the user operating it when
> established internet standards for quoting text aren't followed when
> replying?

The MUA.  When forced to use Outlook (what I prefer to call "Outhouse")
at my previous job, I had to make the extra effort to reply to messages
in the prefered style of the internet community.  Because Outlook makes
it more of a effort on the user to format message replies in a
different manner than the Outlook wants you to do it, even the users
who know better fall into the Outlook style over time.  Can software
be passive-aggressive?

If the only exposure to the Internet community a person has is with
software that prefers to make its own rules, it is hard to blame the
person for bad style.  It is now the norm that most people interacting
with the Internet use proprietary software, a world where the
proprietary software vendors promote their way of how things should be
done to lock their user in.

--ewh