Re: OT: HTML mail (Was: Re: OFFLIST: No HTML, please)

 would just like to say that styled text has value in text
communication.  I'm not talking about images, pretty colors, or
JavaScript, but the ability to italicize/underline/embolden is quite
useful, and the ASCII approximations are ugly.

Heck, I use styled text all the time even in AIM, much less email,
and miss the capability when I'm using GTalk, which doesn't have them.
 Maybe it's my way of trying to make up for the l33t d00dzorz and
their chatspeak.

In any case, plain text is something I put up with because I have to,
but styled text is preferable.  Unfortunately, our options for
styled text in email are limited to HTML, which is both horrendous
overkill and a security nightmare, and RTF, which is a name used to
refer to at least two different, wholly-incompatible formats, either
of which is pretty much an abomination that should never have been
looséd upon the world.

IME, HTML is the lesser of evils here, as long as it's used with
restraint.  It'd be nice if we could enforce some sort of restriction
on what's allowed in a text/html mail message as opposed to web page.
Something akin to the allowed tags in blog comments would be about
right.