Use plain-text for mail [was: Arbitrary function: find the number(s) of expected arguments]

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> Drew, your message is actually much harder to read in Thunderbird that the
> one you replied to. Maybe using a plain text response in such cases would be
> best?

Certainly it would be.  That's why I spent several minutes reformatting
Paul's first message I replied to.  It's one reason we have used plain
text for this mailing list.  I would hope that we continue to do that.

> I had no trouble reading Paul's email, but yours was tricky.

Sorry about that.  I didn't have 20 minutes extra to reformat Paul's
message to (clear) plain text.  Had I just converted it to plain
text without bothering to reformat (to indicate who said what etc.),
it would have been even more unreadable, I'm sure.

You apparently had no problem reformatting for plain text, however.
Perhaps Thunderbird does that better than my mail client.

Wrt the clarity of HTML messages: It depends on your mail client,
the fonts you have available, etc.  Again, a reason to use only
plain text for this list.

FWIW, I use HTML mail maybe 95% of the time at work, as do all
of my colleagues.  And that includes for mailing-list discussions
that involve long threads with deeply nested quotation.  No one
has a problem with this, even though we use different mail clients
etc.  But top-posting is typical - the style is different from here.

I use plain text and bottom-post for mailing lists like this one.

> On 03/25/2016 02:19 PM, Drew Adams wrote:
>
> > (Please use plain-text for this mailing list from now on.
> > I won't bother trying to convert the formatting this time.)

Hopefully this exchange will motivate some of the few who still
use HTML here to use only plain text from now on.