On Sunday 15 February 2004 01:52, Vince Littler wrote:
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. ...snip
Try running a popular mailing list Vince, Bulk IS an issue.
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.
Html is more than complete enough for the needs of email. That's precisely the problem. The godawefull crap some people inflict on others just because the CAN is overkill.
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.
Righto...
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.
But we Invite the ideas when we open an email account, and (in the present case) subscribe to mailing lists. It's the trash that comes with the ideas that is insulting. If I send you a letter by post, and as soon as you opened the envelope five people sprang from nowhere and shouted several words of the message loudly while others rummaged thru your bookshelf and still others painted your walls you would no forget what I said in the letter (and probably never open another from me). In otherwords, elaborate mark up is COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. It does not aid the clear presentation of ideas. Well expressed Ideas do not need bold red blinking text. Poorly expressed Ideas can not be improved with bold red blinking. One can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and attempts to do so always fail and annoy the sow.
The OT list shows that there is far more potential to cause offence using plain ascii than ever you could with formatting.
Now I think you are confusing form and substance here... ;-)
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).
I may be wrong, but isn't pdf a proprietary format?
Hard to say. I know every SuSE distro since 8.0 has had the ability to print to pdf. You can even edit pdfs with Kwrite I'm told.
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.
If he would STOP there that would be find. But no one will. Give me bold, underline, and indentation management and I would be happy. But others would decide blinking text was essential, backbround images critical, and musical accompanyment really really nice... I like the Steven's Idea of css-driven presentation markup far better than the idea of html. As long as the tags are VERY limited, and unknown tags are simply dropped, and no backgrounds, attachments, musical presentation etc etc ad infinitum. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen