On 2 Sep 2025 16:38, Vinnie Falco wrote:
On Sat, Aug 30, 2025 at 7:42 AM Andrey Semashev via Boost <boost@lists.boost.org <mailto:boost@lists.boost.org>> wrote:
Plain text is the only sustainable format for long-term online communication
Rich‑text (Markdown/HTML) makes C++ mailing‑list discussions clearer than plain text. It preserves code exactly (indentation, tabs, long lines),
Plain text also does.
highlights identifiers,
No, it doesn't, unless you manually mark them. Which you can also do in plain text, if needed.
and avoids smart‑quote breakage.
I don't know what this means. Decent email clients handle quotations, including nested ones, just fine.
Structured text—headings, lists, steps—lets people skim proposals;
All of these exist in plain text.
diagrams and benchmark figures remove guesswork;
Markdown and HTML don't support diagrams or other graphical figures. If you mean images, then yes, but I don't think this would be an actually desirable feature. First, they are not searchable, and second, they tend to be misused in various ways, like posting jokes and comics from the internet. No, thanks. When was the last time when you wanted to draw a graph, or heck, even a table, in a reply to the ML? I mean something actually useful, not the silly stuff from xkcd or demotivator. Personally, I have a hard time remembering if I even had such a need once.
quoting exact lines stays stable.
Again, I don't know what this means.
Archives become searchable documents and are easier for screen readers.
Markup and images do not improve searchability, quite the opposite.
There’s no downside: send multipart/alternative with a clean plaintext sibling and a sanitized HTML version; block remote images; keep patches in plain text; publish a tiny style guide. Result: fewer misunderstandings, faster reviews, better archives. We don’t allow undefined behavior in code; let’s avoid undefined meaning in email.
Multipart email is problematic because clients tend to try and display the HTML version, and then butcher the original message when one tries to reply, leaving it to the responder to deal with this mess manually. No HTML, please, plain text only.
And no Comic Sans.
Right, and that's a point in favor of plain text again. Everyone chooses the font they like to view messages.