13 Mar
2017
13 Mar
'17
12:22 a.m.
Back when I was at Sun the attachment thing was all the rage. Yet
I developed a system, I did my important stuff in roff, I'd attach
the typeset version but I'd make the main message be nroff | colcrt -
output.
Why? Because while all the "cool kids" liked the attachments, the
execs (they'd be the guys I was trying to convince) just read whatever
the text said. If they wanted to see the other stuff they forwarded
to their admin who knew how to print it.
I was measurably more effective at getting the execs to do what I
wanted than other engineers.
On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 02:13:55PM -0400, Doug McIlroy wrote:
Allowing more or less arbitrary attachments was a real
convenience.
But allowing such stuff to serve as the message proper was
dubious at best. Not only did it require recipients to obtain
special software to read some messages; it also posed a
security threat.
I still use mailx precisely because it will only display plain text.
With active text such as HTML, it is all too easy to mistakenly
brush over a phishing link. Outfits like Constant Contact do their
nonprofit clients a disservice by sending stuff that I won't even
peek at. And it's an annoying chore when companies I actually want
to deal with send receipts and the like in (godawful) HTML only.
Doug
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm