On Wed, Apr 03, 2002 at 02:43:13PM -0500, Stephane St Hilaire wrote:
> > From: Iggy Drougge [mailto:optimus@canit.se]
> > I certainly don't. OTOH I don't post them on the internet. Instead, I
> > print them out. Everyone can read printouts, only a selected 
> Reading fixed width fonts is also obviously better than proportionally
> spaced ones containing italics and bolds where needed ?
> 
> > few can read the document format of the week.
> 
> HTML is hardly the format of the week. Sure it's not the format of 30 years
> ago but heck technology evolves and sometimes software needs to be upgraded.
> 
> > Communication and papers are two different things. When I 
> > call someone on
> > the phone, I don't want to hear the hisses of a modem, I just 
> > ewant plain
> > speak. Likewise, when I read email, I expect plain text, not garbled
> > markup.
> 
> Upgrade your e-mail client this way you can get the italics, bolds and all
> those little thingies that have been available for decades on print but not
> in e-mail and that most users with common sense would rather have than be
> deprived of. This is probably why some e-mail clients default to using the
> "richest" format, as odd as you may find it being I assume on a strict
> feature/technological diet.

Stephane, you seem to not be considering a problem that I find to be a
major one in your point of view. Most people aren't capable of
exercising good judgement about when and how to use such features. 

Blinking, colourful, giant text may look 'neat' to some, but only serves
to detract from the content of their messages. As a classic example, go
look at the first document most people create in a page layout
program... and count the different fonts...

> > use email. At least not on the internet. On an intranet, you 
> > may do as you
> > wish, but not here. You have not a bloody idea about the receiver's
> > ability to read anything but the common format, namely plain 
> > text. Is that
> 
> So you expect that the common ASCII (less and less common among e-mail
> users) format will "still" be the norm in 10 years ? Should we really fight
> to keep our ASCII pure ?

That's two different debates. If you wish to discuss what future
standards will be, there are forums for that (somewhere else). In the
same way that two people speaking a language other than that known by
the rest of the people in the room may be considered rude - attempting
to force non-standard content formatting could also be considered rude.

> > I'm against being sent anything which I can't read anywhere I 
> > like to read
> > mail.
> 
> Upgrade your e-mail client, or perhaps you are using something that is no
> longer evolving and has no plans on supporting new RFCs ?

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znvy pyvrag unaqyr vg cebcreyl? Ng gur irel yrnfg, fvapr vg vf abg gur
pbzzba sbezng sbe pbzzhavpngvbaf urer, nz V abg orvat boabkvbhf ol
pubbfvat gb jevgr cneg bs zl ercyl va ebg13?

> > Indeed, I think that you're (if you'd like to stand up as an 
> > M$ spokesman)
> > evil. You're polluting the internet. 
> 
> Polluting a communication medium by making it richer, sounds like Devil
> worship to me. Is IPV6 polluting IPV4 ? Is the color TV polluting the black
> and white set ? By the way we all know that MS is making money and is
> therefore intrinsically evil, we don't need the "satirical" dollar sign to
> know that. Is it supposed to be an "attack" on MS to highlight the fact that
> it is making money ?

Those comparisons are flawed. IPV6 doesn't (yet) stop me from accessing
hosts I want to reach. Color TV signals were designed to still display
properly on black & white sets - people didn't have to upgrade their B&W
sets to still get B&W - it _just worked_.

> > You, a single firm, behave as if
> > common norms didn't at all exist. No other supplier would 
> > come up with as
> > tasteless an idea as making HTML posting not only a 
> > capability, but the
> > *default behaviour* of your application. What makes you think that the
> > standards never apply to you?
> 
> Most users like to have the ability to choose font, emphasize and so fourth.
> Why a technological company would stick to 30 year old "standards" is beyond
> me unless they want to become dinosaurs and have few users and few
> applications running on their systems (the obvious key to success).

Let's throw out English too - people have been using it for far too long.

> I have however one question for David:
> I can personally understand that a Microsoft employee would get slightly
> annoyed with the witless boring MS bashing that goes on in this list when
> there's basically little justification for it (seeing how actively Ms is

Wow. If the government decided tomorrow that all government
communications will be conducted in Esperanto from now on - thereby
forcing everyone to 'upgrade' their language skills, don't you think
that would deserve some bashing? 

When a solution that works _better_ is available, people will naturally
switch to it. Microsoft does not operate that way. While the technology
exists to define things like standard, extensible file formats, MS would
rather define a new one with each MS Office release. How many office
2000 documents did you receive, and contact the sender to say 'Sorry, I
can't open that - could you save it as word97 for me?' before you gave
up, and were forced to buy the new product?

-- 
David Maxwell, david@vex.net|david@maxwell.net --> Mastery of UNIX, like
mastery of language, offers real freedom. The price of freedom is always dear,
but there's no substitute. Personally, I'd rather pay for my freedom than live
in a bitmapped, pop-up-happy dungeon like NT. - Thomas Scoville