Quoth Philip Hazel on Wed, Oct 06, 1999:
> On Wed, 6 Oct 1999, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> > I meet people who don't see a single use for HTML or non-ASCII in email
> > either. Baffling isn't it?
> I have to react to that. I see no use for HTML or non-ASCII in email
> *when used as a medium for correspondence*. I have no problem with
> sending attachments in any form you might want, but if you just want to
> send some text to somebody I don't see the point of wrapping it up into
> some fancy format, except that it uses more bandwidth and therefore
> makes more money for somebody, I guess. Cynical? me? well, yes :-)
> 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.
Same about disclaimers and application/ms-tnef (would somebody
_please_ explain me what it is?). You end up with messages like:
Hi dear, I'll be home late today.
[Same phrase follows in HTML and Word formats.]
****************************************
THIS MESSAGE DOES NOT REPRESENT VIEWS...
****************************************
[Big HTML attachment with several logos follows. In case
the recipient doesn't understand HTML, it's also
attached in Word, RTF, Bouncing Java, and Animated GIF
formats.]
Annoying. Fortunately, I don't get lots of those.
And why Word? People worked really hard to develop connectivity
between different computers and operating systems. Even ASCII is
not "given". They got to the point where you can take text
written on Foonix and move it to BarOS without problem, even if
the said text contains some typesetting and pretty (or ugly, for
that matter) pictures. And now, these morons ruin it all by
sending each other Word-based e-mail? Well, and there were times
where I said people that No, My CV Is Not Available In Word
Format Goodbye. You can't read troff? I'll translate it to
PostScript for you, then. Or, if you can't read it, just give me
your fax number.
> I read my email using Pine on Unix.
Mutt here. Almost all modern UNIX mailers can be configured to
run Netscape when you open an HTML attachment. But why bother?
> I now never bother to look
> at gratuitous attachments in HTML (or anything else, for that matter).
Yup. Why bother? I doubt you will learn anything else from
these.
> 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.
Hmm. People call _me_ old-fassioned because of similar views.
Me? Old-fassioned? Yes, I don't like KDE or HTML e-mail, but
I'm just <mumble> years old and only <mumble> years in the
computing industry (or academia, for that matter)!
Vadik, disclosing his age.
--
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-- G. B. Shaw
