<H1>HTML in e-mail to lists</H1>
Classical typography has its own rules. Classical typography does not
use the <EM>bold</EM> attribute within a paragraph but only in headers
or title because otherwise it is aggressive. Emphasize has to be preferred;
italic or roman is then used according to the style (roman or already
italic) around. Everyone should know it by reading the NY Times or Le Monde.
Paragraphs are usually hierarchized by the author of the document not by the
publisher. The hierarchy is made of headers at various levels, and lists.
They are three kinds of list:
<OL>
<LI>An enumerated list like this one.
<LI>A non-enumerated list with bullets for example;
<LI>A descriptive list: bullets are followed by
key words (and then a normal paragraph).
</OL>
Headers from a particular level (sections, subsections etc.) can also
be numbered and again it is the responsibility of the author to decide
both the level of a header and if they are numbered or not.
The responsability of the publisher of the book or the browser of a
client or here the mailer of a client is to render the structure of
the original text with its own (end of chain) local tools. It could be
a simple visual structure on a black and white 80 columns screen with
the use of tab characters and blank or dash lines; or it could be a
more sophisticated look with the use of different fonts. If an author
wants to change the default bullets with its own images, that is no
more classical typography and no more a classical structured
document. Therefore the listserver should filter out these images,
because in my view, they are not essential to the comprehension of a
mail and are consuming a lot of bandwidth. Also the width of a
paragraph is not the responsibility of the author (the length, yes)
but of the publisher (i.e. the client).
These simple rules make the difference between plaintext and classical
typography as used in the NY Times. It is a huge difference.
Now, which structured (or markup) language could be used in e-mail to
lists? LaTeX was one of the first candidate, but HTML seems now to be
the more appropriate.
A mailer should at least be able to understand the classical tags but
also keep as-is some non-standards tags like <sarcarms> </sarcarms>
which are essential to the comprehension of the original text and more
and more used in e-mails.
So, opening the lists to HTML and encouraging people to write
structured documents, is not an open door to eccentricity and
bandwidth consumption.
Nicolas Brouard
Institut national d'études démographiques
Paris
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sauvy.ined.fr/~brouard
