[kazinator]

> Popular email clients have caused terrible ideas like HTML email to proliferate

That's a very backwards attitude that will turn away people.

HTML in e-mails is a useful tool. I encourage it in the dev mailing lists that I operate.

There is no conflict between HTML use and all the various dev-related use cases like posting patches or pull requests or whatever.

[fyi1183]

The main problem with HTML email is that it breaks interleaved responses ("bottom posting").

Bottom posting is so useful that even Outlook users reinvent it, badly of course, using different text colours etc.

It's been decades now, why have none of the advocates of HTML emails fixed this really basic problem?

[andreareina]

Could you go into why you encourage HTML in the dev mailing lists you operate?

[kazinator]

Yes. I like the HTML formatting; it makes for more effective communication. You can use bulleted paragraphs; bold, italic, typewriter font.

In a HTML message, you can have an indented code block which is not physically indented. When it is copied and pasted, it has no indent.

Hyperlinks and images can be used in HTML messages, which is convenient.

Color is possible: syntax colored code can be incorporated into an HTML e-mail.

Also, I use an mailing list archiver called Lurker, which I customized such that it allows HTML messages to be incorporated into the archive. So poor archiving of HTML mails isn't any objection.