On 2003-06-19 18:31:58 -0500, gep2@terabites.com wrote: > > There are many clear indicators that large numbers of people like to both send > > and receive HTML formatted messages. > > I don't think that's true at all, and in particular not for people who realize > the implications of it. When we replaced Netscape 4 with Mozilla as the default MUA, we disabled the HTML editor at the explicit request of some users. So far only one user has complained. > > As far back as 1981, when I first started selling one of the > > first "corporate" email systems, Digital's ALL-IN-1 office, customers > > were asking for and often demanding "rich text" or "high quality" email > > messaging capabilities. > > If they want "high quality" e-mail there are a whole variety of options, going > well beyond HTML. One is to send .DOC files (which can be read with freeware > viewers), another is Adobe PDF files. These options are way worse than HTML. HTML is simple to render, mostly device-independent (I can view an HTML file just fine in an 80x25 terminal window, and I could also view it on a palm without much loss of quality). Word documents are proprietary, and I don't know any program which can display them reliably except MS Word (and then only the same version which was used to write it). PDF files assume a fixed page layout: My 21" monitor is capable of displaying a whole A4 page in a readble font size. a 17" monitor usually isnt, and a palmtop doesn't stand a chance. Also, Word and PDF generally are a lot larger (even though HTML produced by editors is often extremely bloated). Also, an HTML renderer as a separate program can be small and fast. I use w3m for HTML to text conversion, and it is usually so fast I don't even notice that I'm not reading a text mail. Invoking Star Office or Acroread takes several seconds, and it opens in a separate window, which is annoying (even more so if I am logged in remotely, and the X11 connection is going over an SSH tunnel over a 768 kbit/s leased line (and that's fast - I used a 33.6 modem until not too long ago)). I agree fully, that HTML is usually unnecessary and has little benefit over plain text, but suggesting the use of Word or PDF instead of it is replace one evil with an worse one. > In any case, such mail does not have to > be sent from unknown/untrusted/unfamiliar senders. ACK. > And if they REALLY WANT to use HTML, another approach without most of the bulk > is to put it up on a Web server (using an 'unguessable' URL) and E-mail (as > plain ASCII text) the URL to the intended recipient. For normal mail, I think that's a really stupid idea. (It goes a bit into the direction of message/external-body or Bernstein's IM, but without automatic retrieval by the MUA, that's a sure way to get your e-Mail ignored). It is feasible if the document at the URL meaningful outside of the context of the email (Like: "I wrote up the minutes of the last meeting. You can find them at $url"). hp -- _ | Peter J. Holzer | Latein ist das humanoide Äquivalent |_|_) | Sysadmin WSR | zu Fortran. | | | hjp@hjp.at | __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Alexander Bartolich in at.linux
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