At 11:57 AM 2/23/99 -0500, Byron C. Howes wrote:
>Reality is that HTML is here and people are using it. It hardly matters
>if it is 'optimal' or not. It's a standard and is a reality. If we
>worried about 'optimality' in everything we did the internet wouldn't
>exist because we would never agree on protocol standards. As usual, the
>first guy out of the blocks sets the standard and in this case it's
>HTML.
This is an assertion on your part. In my opinion, it is not a correct one.
A significant percentage of my users (15%, last time I polled) can't deal
with HTML mail except by saving the attachment as a file and starting a
browser. It is likely that the percentage of users who can deal with HTML
sections in a majordomo 1 digest is even lower.
So, whereas HTML is here as a formatting language, and perhaps even the
majority can handle it, itis not pervasive enough for me to think that I
should cut off the 10% of users that can't deal with it in single email, or
the 40% of my users who are on digest.
>It hardly matters if people 'should' do it or not. The fact is that
>they are doing it and that we, as basically support for what our users
>and subscribers want to do (hmm -- I'll bet that treads on a few egos,)
>need to adapt our ways and our software to provide that support.
Whenever I've held a vote on this issue, my subscribers have come out
overwhelmingly against allowing attachments or multipart/alternatives and
so forth on mailing lists. This has not changed. In fact, I started
blocking mime because a subscriber held a vote on rally-l and the voted
support for plain text only was overwhelming. I wrote demime because I got
tired of educating users.
>Our subscribers are not going to wait around for us to find an optimal
>solution. Email software developers aren't interested in developing new
>markup languages or different modes of expressivity. They make money
>because they write for what is out there now rather than for some
>theoretical optimality. You and I may not like it, but the reality is
>we don't have much choice in the matter. We don't do our job if we dig
>in our feet and refuse to acknowledge what is patently obvious.
If I had any indication that my subscribers wanted html, I'd be likely to
give it to them. There is no indication that they want it and every
indication tha they don't.
T think you need to take a bit of your own advice. Talk to your
subscribers, find out what they need and want. Mine want plain text.
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