Considering the implementations can't and won't be changed by tommorow morning, what do you suggest? The tv analogy labels the opinions in a wrong way. No, html is not disliked by some people because they insist on using emacs and mutt, and avoiding X. Html is disliked because today, for about the 3rd time this week, I had to clean off viruses and trojans from 2 family member's PCs. That also doesn't mean that html can't be used to make mail more presentable, or has no use. However, you're not sending presentations to mailing lists. This is exactly where the phrase 'simpler is better' applies. No, html mail doesn't consume more of my bandwidth, eat more of my cpu cycles, and doesn't hurt my eyes. Just imagine for a second that everyone on the list starts using Outlook Express templates in their postings, or adding smily's and avatars. Wouldn't that be appealing? > The primary problems (i.e. virii and > backdoors in IE and OE) are not caused by HTML per se but rather by weak > and insecure implementations thereof. Thus you are assuming a > cause-and-effect relationship where such is not really the case. Yes, in > the majority of cases (Windows users in particular) HTML mail is dangerous. > But HTML itself is not the root cause of the problem.