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

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

[Eugene Sajine]

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

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

[J.H.]

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

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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?

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

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

[ellis]

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

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

--
http://yosemitenews.info/

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

[David Miller]

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

> 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.

This policy is definitely not changing, plain text only.

Fix your email client.

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

[Eugene Sajine]

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:
>> The necessity to use the desktop in order to send a message to the
>> list is annoying and not quite contemporary.
>
> So the list should change just because your mail client is broken?
>
> --
> http://yosemitenews.info/
>

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

[Eugene Sajine]

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 6:25 PM, Eugene Sajine <euguess@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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:
>>> The necessity to use the desktop in order to send a message to the
>>> list is annoying and not quite contemporary.
>>
>> So the list should change just because your mail client is broken?
>>
>> --
>> http://yosemitenews.info/
>>
>

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

Thanks,
Eugene

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

[Eugene Sajine]

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 6:19 PM, David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:
> From: "J.H." <warthog9@eaglescrag.net>
> Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 15:16:11 -0700
>
>> 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.
>
> This policy is definitely not changing, plain text only.
>
> Fix your email client.
>
>

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

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

[david]

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

>> The necessity to use the desktop in order to send a message to the
>> list is annoying and not quite contemporary.
>
> So the list should change just because your mail client is broken?

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

Re: plain text only policy prohibits the use of android based mobile

[ellis]

> 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.

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/

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

[Junio C Hamano]

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.

RE: plain text only policy prohibits the use of android based mobile

[Tim Mazid]

> From: ellis@spinics.net
> Subject: Re: plain text only policy prohibits the use of android based mobile
> To: git@vger.kernel.org
> Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 16:22:24 -0700
>
> > 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.
>
> 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.
>

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
 		 	   		  

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

[Randal L. Schwartz]

>>>>> "Junio" == Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

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!

:-)

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.posterous.com/ for Smalltalk discussion

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

[Eugene Sajine]

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 7:14 PM,  <david@lang.hm> wrote:
> On Wed, 18 May 2011, ellis@spinics.net wrote:
>
>>> The necessity to use the desktop in order to send a message to the
>>> list is annoying and not quite contemporary.
>>
>> So the list should change just because your mail client is broken?
>
> 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
>

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

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

[Junio C Hamano]

Eugene Sajine <euguess@gmail.com> writes:

> 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.

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.

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

[David Brown]

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

> 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.

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

-- 
Sent by an employee of the Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc.
The Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. is a member of the Code Aurora Forum.

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

[Junio C Hamano]

David Brown <davidb@codeaurora.org> writes:

> On Wed, May 18 2011, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> Doesn't clicking on "Plain text" work?  There are several people on lkml
> (includng Linus, I believe) who use gmail.

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.

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

[david]

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

> Eugene Sajine <euguess@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> 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.
>
> 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*].

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