On Saturday 14 February 2004 09:03 pm, John Andersen wrote [replying to Saturday 14 February 2004 11:25, Steven T. Hatton]:
I think you mis-understand the objection to html in email.
It is not objectionable ONLY because of security issues, but also due to the bulk it imposes on the email itself, and the fact that it is not universally readable (such as when non-graphical mail readers are used).
Bulk is less of an issue these days. For me, the real objection to HTML mail is that there is no standard which supports it. Hence when someone takes it into their head 'wouldn't it be cool to do email in HTML', you end up with a population of a variety of different clients which might or might not support it, and in the old days, when I had clients which did not support it, I just used to see markup, which I thought was just ill mannered [on the part of the sender and commercial bullying on the part of the sender's email client supplier] - to the extent that to this day I do not respect the senders of HTML mail. The other issue with no standard for HTML in email, is that the issues which Steven is trying to address are not addressed. HTML is not a complete standard for Markup in email, and until there is such a standard, HTML mail clients are premature.
But in spite of the security, Size, and universal accessability issues there is ALSO the sheer annoyance factor of having to put up with someone's wild and crazy ideas of formating, Fonts, Colors, backgrounds.
A growing number of people reject the idea that anyone with a keyboard and a modem gets to determine what appears on someone elses screen.
The beauty of plain text is that ideas stand by themselves.
When you say 'The beauty of plain text is that ideas stand by themselves', you are putting substance above form, which I would agree with. However, when you say 'A growing number of people reject the idea that anyone with a keyboard and a modem gets to determine what appears on someone elses screen', you are missing the fact that regardless of the form of an email, the sender is allowed to project ideas into someone else's head. The OT list shows that there is far more potential to cause offence using plain ascii than ever you could with formatting.
People who absolutely need formatting, (such as for sending reports or complex printed pages) etc have plenty of generally trusted formats such as pdf to use (as attachments). These are (and rightly should be) easily filterable against the day an exploit is found in the format.
I may be wrong, but isn't pdf a proprietary format? I think the beauty of Steven's proposal is that the format should be simple enough to be open and demonstrably be as exploit proof as plain ascii, but allow more dimensions of expression. Vince