Robin Whittle wrote:
>>Plaintext is the default in Mozilla, after long fighting.
>>
>Wow!!! I didn't know this. I am really happy to hear this. My rant
>is redundant. I apologise for sending it without first doing sufficient
>research.
>
[...]
>my Mozilla install used my Netscape preferences, so I didn't notice that
>plain text email was the default.
>
Just so you don't misunderstand me: Mozilla *sends* plaintext by
default, but the default *composer* is HTML. We convert to plaintext
during sending. Sometimes, we ask the user, but with plaintext preselected.
I believe that this is the best solution, considering that many, many
non-computer-savvy users, which hopefully end up using Mozilla. They
don't care about character-level control, but want a nice GUI which does
the work for them. If we present them with a plaintext editor, their
reaction will be "Uh, ugly! Where was the Microsoft one again?". We give
them that nice GUi and a nice output, while maintaining compatibility
even with the oldest mailers.
Robin Whittle wrote before:
>>>I get frustrated at times that so
>>>much effort goes into making things that look impressive at first, but
>>>in fact lack depth and reliability - and are then presented to everyone
>>>as the default way of doing things. The result is a ***lot*** of
>>>frustration, wasted time and effort and miscommunication.
>>>
While I agree that plaintext should be the default, it is ironically
this very decision of Netscape to push HTML, that probably saves us from
worse problems. If it were not for Netscape estabilishing HTML, I bet
that Microsoft's mailers would send RTF by default by now. Someday, you
might have needed Microsoft Word then to read mail from clueless MS users.
