Basic Python Query

Thu Aug 22 23:12:52 EDT 2013

On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 09:45:43 -0400, Ned Batchelder wrote:

> So that I understand what's going on, what's the bad thing that happens
> with a multi-part message?  I would have thought that mail readers would
> choose the preferred part, or is it something to do with the message
> quoting?

This is not just a mailing list, it is also a newsgroup, and sending HTML 
content to a text newsgroup is considered rude.

Just to add insult to injury, one of the most popular (and otherwise 
excellent) news readers, Pan, treats HTML as "plain text", and displays 
junk like this at the end of your HTML posts:

<html>
  <head>
    <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
      http-equiv="Content-Type">
  </head>
  <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
    On 8/21/13 6:50 PM, Fábio Santos wrote:<br> <blockquote
    cite="mid:CAA=1kxRdo0ZAH_SLvZshFua7B4A=9YZ1H30KBi-
    KAGqDXiovVg at mail.gmail.com"
      type="cite">
      <p dir="ltr"><br>
        On 21 Aug 2013 20:07, "Johannes Bauer" <<a
        ...

but I don't blame the sender for that, I accept it as a misfeature in 
Pan, which otherwise is one of the best news readers around.

But even if it were a mailing list, HTML mail is still harmful. Like lead 
in petrol, it doesn't become less harmful because "everybody does it". 
When your mail client renders HTML mail, you're effectively giving anyone 
in the world permission to execute code in your mail reader, and trusting 
that they won't abuse it. Or at least that your HTML display engine has 
no vulnerabilities they can exploit. It allows them to embed web bugs in 
their mail, and track when and if you read their mail, and that's not a 
vulnerability, it's a feature.

If you've seen as many emails with orange text on a pink background with 
yellow flowers and animated puppies as I have, you'll have a visceral 
hatred of HTML email too.

And it inflates the size of the email, at best by a factor of 2 or 3, or 
if they're using an editor like Microsoft Word that generates garbage for 
HTML, by a factor or 20 or 30.

-- 
Steven