Ben, you seem to be disparaging of the reports of a Net cafe operator
Matthew Thomas who observes his users putting most of their energy into
email - and using web-mail to achieve it, because that is the only
practical approach on a computer which is not your own.
I think that the people in those cafes are very those who have their own
computers at home or in the office - but they are at lunch, on holidays,
doing something they can't do at work etc.
Email is where so much energy goes for many users. Their communication
needs are not complex, as far as I know - it is generally words with
paragraph layout, quoting of material from the message being replied to,
often some URLS and sometimes sending and receiving attachments.
Most people have no understanding of HTML and different formats, or how
things they do on screen won't appear to the recipient, will appear in a
garbled form, and/or will annoy the recipient (especially if it goes to
a mailing list) - so I believe Mozilla should default to plain text
compose so everything they write will in fact get through without loss,
mangling or complications.
You also seem to assume that the elusive "average user" or newbie knows
how to operate a word processor.
I don't assume this at all. I assume they know how to read and write.
I assume they want to use the alphanumeric symbols, in order, and have
them arrive in that order and with the same layout, or at least a layout
that doesn't alter what they are trying to achieve. The probably don't
want to learn any commands, configuration options etc. and I am sure
they don't want to be faced with any dialogue box which urges them to
send their message in a way which strips out some of the things they
might have done to it and (although they probably don't realise it at
the time) will completely reformat the lines they saw into different
lines in the final plain text output.
Even those who use Word every day may be utterly clueless about it. I
once got a draft paper from a psych professor, who wrote a voluminous
book with over a thousand references. I think he had the footnote bit
sorted out, but all his headings were manual boldface. So here is a
published author who has spent years using Word professionally, and he
doesn't know what a style is.
While some people want to press buttons and have fun with colour and
fonts, I think most people just want to get on with using things without
having to discover anything extra about the tools they are using.
But these are peripheral arguments to my main ones:
Plain text meets the requirement that a unidirectional communication
system should not transform what the sender thought they were sending
into something else. Even with HTML email clients at both ends, there
are so many variables such as fonts, bugs in the HTML which the sender
tolerates and the recipient client refuses to handle etc., that there is
no certainty of reliable communications now or in the foreseeable future
with HTML. There will never be a situation in which all email clients
are HTML compatible - so I think it is best to make the default for
clients plain text and let their HTML functions be used on an opt-in
basis by those inclined to do so.
I imagine that Matthew Thomas or any other Net cafe operator could give
a more reliable report on the email needs of the majority of Net users
than I can. My impressions are largely drawn from emailing privately
and with a busy mailing list with hundreds of people who are keen to
write and who have no particular interest in computers at all - because
the list has nothing to do with computers.
- Robin
