Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
What's wrong with HTML is
- It can contain viruses, tracking software, and other malware (as
explained in the message you're replying to)
- It enforces the appearance of a message on the reader, whether
she likes it or not (sometimes things like black on dark blue)
- It takes up a lot more space, which is a problem for people on
dialup lines or with space-limited mailboxes.
I don't see how an HTML message could possibly contain a virus, unless you have a horribly broken mailreader. It's simply markup, like SGML or TeX or whatever (or at least, the mail reader should treat it as simply markup, certainly not as executable code). Tracking software I'll agree is an issue, but I don't expect anyone on this list to be including image bugs in their emails.
Appearance too should be taken care of by the mailreader -- if you want black on white background, your mailreader should have an option to ignore HTML colors or something of that sort.
The last point I'll concede, though "a lot" isn't always necessarily accurate, especially for relatively simple messages without absurd amounts of formatting.
-Mark