Thanks for the explanation. I was not aware of the HTML view, so that is handy. I understand your view on the text reply.
Please consider the needs of customers like us, who have support tickets frequently consisting of multiple back and forth messages containing multiple screen grabs each. Customers type text into the message and they include images.
I believe that you are understanding the role of the inline image attachments from a technical standpoint and as auxiliary to the content. They are essential components of the message, which is why the customer puts them there and why we include them in our replies. If you remove the reference to them, it means we won't even be aware the customer included them so we won't go to open the HTML view. All tickets show with image attachments because customers have multiple images as part of their signature, so there are always attachments.
If you don't include them in the message content you're putting us at a disadvantage. Customers are using those frequently. Your own software makes it easy to include them. It does not make sense to me that these are not viewed as first class. From a user's perspective, text or html is irrelevant - they are formats. The message content is what is important.
Thank you for your consideration. Surely we are not the only customers with this viewpoint.