Evie Leder wrote: >I don't understand what the fuss is. IF PM allowed rich text or multipart >outgoing emails, those who didn't want it would not have to use it. It >would widen it's base, which would be good for the company. (but, with >the text-only zealots, it might be a difficult move) Perhaps it could be >set up with plain text as the standard, and only by changing a >preference would it allow you to send multipart emails.... > >It would be helpful when dealing with commercial clients who expect me to >be able to send multipart emails and also for me to know more about >sending them. For those who don't want it, well, they could turn it off. :)
What you say is to some extent true. I for one wouldn't mind if PM offered HTML editing, because I would just turn it off, as you say. The point is rather whether including it would widen their base enough to justify the expenditure of resources given their target market and other features they would not be able to apply those resources to. It's a business decision, not a technical one. As I understand it, CTM has taken the position that they would rather address the kind of features that make them different from other mailers and that meet the needs of a certain kind of power user who is frustrated with the limitations of other mailers. Whether this is a successful long-term business strategy remains to be seen, as does any niche-oriented business strategy, but in my opinion, and I think that of many Powermail users, it is, as we now have FoxTrot, very flexible filtering, excellent spam control, good scriptability, multiple inbox views (the recent mail window) etc., all of which help handle large volumes of incoming mail, generally much better than the alternatives. And there are still things CTM could do, to judge from the lists of feature requests you see on this list, that many, and perhaps most, of us would like to see before HTML editing, which is big, difficult to do well, and does nothing for helping one manage lots of incoming mail efficiently. If I'm not mistaken, we "text-only zealots" would prefer CTM did these things, as they are useful to us, rather than put resources into something expensive that we don't care about. Does that make us zealots? I think it just means we have our interests and the pro-HTML camp has theirs. No need for name calling. After all, I could say that people who really care about outgoing HTML also probably care about mobile phones with polyphonic ring tones and multimedia messaging. Both are sexy; both are largely pointless or even obstructing when the volume of communications is the major issue. But I won't say that, as it would be name calling. :-) The real question for CTM is how providing HTML editing at cost X compares to providing something else at cost Y that helps the Mac-using professional inundated with 1000 emails a day to sort it all out and deal with it efficiently today and later on when he needs to search it. And how the numbers X, Y, the 1000 above, and the number of people getting that many mails, are likely to change in the future. At the rate the use of email is growing, I think their bet looks pretty good. They won't take over the world, but they will always have a market, and it will grow. -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd http://orbit3.com
