Re: [Fsfe-uk] Administrivia: html duplicates

[Alex Hudson]

On Sat, 2008-01-26 at 22:10 +0000, Jon Grant wrote:
> I don't think there is any noticeable difference in Thunderbird loading 
> my mailbox or email msg which are in HTML (CPU increases in last decade 
> eliminated any conversion time cost). Perhaps this is just mutt "not 
> being very good"? ;) If it is, why not just swithc to a "better" client?

In technical terms, there shouldn't be vast difference between loading
plain text mails and loading HTML mails - for the most part, that
information comes from an index, so the actual size/content of a mail is
inconsequential.

Ditto the actual on disk storage: in terms of file size, sure, HTML is
bigger. In terms of file system blocks, it's less clear - for the most
part, HTML mails take the same number of blocks in storage.

And in terms of bandwidth: to be honest, unless you're blocking spam
mails based on envelope, it's irrelevant anyway, because hams make up
such a small proportion of overall mail.

I don't think the pure technical argument is persuasive. The practical
argument is much more relevant - in terms of the HTML actually emitted -
but on technical grounds, I actually think HTML wins the theory.

Cheers,

Alex.