On Wed, 6 Oct 1999, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> From: Dave C. <djc@???>
> > I hope this doesnt sound like a "me too", but I have to agree with Phil
> > here.
>
> If the topic is "is HTML right for email?" your point, while quite valid and
> doubtless earning lots of support (myself included), is off-topic:
>
> [snipping]
> > and they send it in a
> proprietary word processor or
> spreadsheet format,
> assumes everyone has MS-Word or
> MS-Excel, or
> reads their mail with an MSIE embedded application.
>
> Then the total non-sequitur:
>
> > HTML is for the web - not email.
Ok, granted, that wasnt directly related.
> HTML is an IETF-ratified standard and is integrable into the mail domain
> through documented, widely implemented and publically and freely available
> formats and content-types. None of the things you're talking about has
> *anything* to do with HTML at all.
Ok.. Someone might have a use for HTML in email. I have none.
> > Philip Hazel wrote:
> > > Sending, on every message, a fancy "business card" in HTML with a logo
> > > that makes it many times bigger than the actual message is particularly
> > > annoying. I read my email using Pine on Unix. I now never bother to look
> > > at gratuitous attachments in HTML (or anything else, for that matter).
> > > [It's different if the message says "here's an attached
> > > document/webpage/binary for your attention".]
> > >
> > > I'm probably an old-fashioned dinosaur (having been around rather a long
> > > time), but I don't like complexity just for the sake of it.
>
> I don't think you'd find much disagreement from anyone here on those points.
> Mis-, gratuitous, needless or over-complex use of technology is something any
> discerning & conscientious viewer would dislike!
>
> My original comment was "could see *no* use for HTML or non-ASCII at all"
> (emphasis added). If you wanted some feedback on your color scheme for a
> client, how would you do that with ASCII? If you wanted to demonstrate your
> typography design portfolio over email, how would you do that with ASCII? If
> you wanted to mix fixed and proportionally spaced text (e.g. annotated
> code listing), how would you do that with ASCII?
>
> The point is that there are some not just valid but otherwise impossible uses
> for HTML in email. I might get flamed for this but it's the technical folk's
> reluctance to appreciate presentation as a form of expression or content that
> often gets in the way of seeing those uses (IME).
>
> Having said all that, if email clients didn't send HTML (or worse some
> hideous XML-wannabe) by default and so caused the user to make a decision and
> actually manually request it each time the world would definitely be a better
> place :-)
Ok, I can make a point here. Presentation may be fine, but the RECEIVER
of the presentation should be making the decision about what
presentation format to use. Unfortunately most people don't ask, or
don't even realize that they should. And I definately agree with the
"default" sending of anything other than plain text. If you dont KNOW
the person at the other end can read your application/xyz format, you
should send text, becuase everything can read text.
(The entire concept of MS based email clients sending all attachments
as Application/OCTET-STREAM instead of the correct MIME type and
instead using the 'three letter extension' standard of DOS legacy,
causing MIME aware readers to STILL not be able to read them, even if
they DO support the correct type, is a whole other story.)
>
> Paul
>
> PS Proponents of the "I use this MUA and it sucks reading HTML" argument
> could take a look at mutt: it does a fantastic job of handling MIME.
> http://www.mutt.org/
I am a proponent of "I use this MUA (pine), and it is capable of
reading HTML, but I dont WANT to read HTML in my email becuase I dont
WANT you to choose what fonts and typesizes I read my message in"
