On Thu, Apr 04, 2002 at 05:22:02PM -0500, Stephane St Hilaire wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 03, 2002 at 02:43:13PM -0500, Stephane St Hilaire wrote:
> > 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. 
> Why would you want e-mail from such people anyway, regardless of it's format
> ? I mean if in your view most people lack judgment then why would you want
> to communicate with them ? They probably shouldn't have the right to use
> computers either ?

Perhaps I would not think their point of view worthwhile, but that would
be a choice I would make privately.

If you insist that it is acceptable for them to send such content to
forums which have settled upon a lowest _COMMON_ denominator for
contributions, then you fail to understand the problem.

You may of course agree upon standards for your personal communications,
or for forums you operate, but sending messages which people can not
read, and contribute to, in an open-forum with other standards, is as
bad as sending off-topic mail, or spam, to such a forum.

> > Blinking, colourful, giant text may look 'neat' to some, but 
> If it detracts from the content than too bad. Sometimes the proper use of
> underlines/bold can actually help get your point accross.

PoInT AcRoSs EnGlIsH BoThEr WhY? 

If it detracts from the content, then the author is punishing himself by
making it less likely that people will bother to read what he wrote. It
will still clutter a mailing list and waste space though.

Yes, proper emphasis _can_ help get a message across. People have
developed methods for doing *this* in ASCII. White text on a white
background is never helpful, so why encourage a system that lets people
do that? For an example, go look at the design of the TeX typesetting
system, or the LyX 'wordprocessor', which prevent people from wasting
time on formatting, and force them to focus on content.

> > That's two different debates. If you wish to discuss what future
> > standards will be, there are forums for that (somewhere else). In the
> Just like I would assume that there are forums better for MS bashing

Until I stop seeing new examples _on a weekly basis_ of Microsoft
abusing their monopolistic position, in ways which are detrimental to
scientific progress, personal privacy, and personal freedom, I consider
almost every forum appropriate to point those problems out. (Briefly,
without dragging the whole forum off-topic.)

Here are some of my recent favorites, not every week's one is a
blockbuster, but these are pretty blatant:

Mar 18th: Windows XP license disallows use with open-source remote
desktop apps:
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/02/03/18/020318oplivingston.xml

Feb 20th: Windows Media Players tell MS about every DVD you watch:
http://www.computerbytesman.com/privacy/wmp8dvd.htm

> > 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 not doing it anyway but I've seen some blokes get rather "rude" (no

You were. That's what started this portion of the thread.
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2002/03/28/0009.html

> careful consideration required) when they got something else than "pure"
> ASCII in their mailboxes. As for standard isn't HTML one anyway ?

Driving on the right side of the road is _a_ standard too. That still
doesn't mean it's acceptable everywhere. Posting contributions to a
mailing-list as uuencoded, zipped, .wav files wouldn't be very welcome
either, although those can all be called standards as well.

This is the crux of the matter - appropriateness. Wearing clothes may be
standard, but unacceptable at a nudist colony. Driving on the right may
be standard in North America, but would be deadly wrong elsewhere.
Wearing a concealed gun may be standard in places, but will get you
arrested elsewhere.

The majority of readers here are (I believe) interested in concise,
efficient communications, with little overhead, which can be contributed
to with a minimum of complexity, and where all contributions are equal.

> > > Polluting a communication medium by making it richer, 
> > > Is IPV6 polluting IPV4 ? Is the color TV 
> > > polluting the black and white set ? 
> > 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_.
> 
> Ok let's talk about CDs and records then. DVDs vs Videos. Do you now
> understand what I'm talking about ? Technology evolves. Technology is not an
> art form it's not better because it's older or more restrictive.

Technology evolves, yes. But if _you_ buy a DVD, it doesn't interfere
with my ability to use VHS tapes. If _you_ buy a CD, it doesn't stop me
from playing my records.

If _you_ post to a forum like this one in HTML, it does interfere with
some people's ability to contribute to (or even read) the discussion.

> > Let's throw out English too - people have been using it for 
> > far too long.
> Historically "leading" languages have changed through time and it may happen
> again in the future. Still I don't see what that has to do with anything.

I said it because you are recommending that people replace a system that
works, and has worked for a long time, with an inferior one.

> The written press has had the ability to italicize, underline, emphasize
> words for more than a century, it is laughable that this is not supported in
> a "standard" way across all e-mail software today. Perhaps you think there
> is a value in keeping e-mail that limited, but I don't see it. It's a matter
> of taste.

HTML is inferior in clarity, inferior in resources, and inferior in
compatability. I'm certainly not convinced that the benefits outweigh
those costs, at this time.

> > > I can personally understand that a Microsoft employee would 
> > get slightly
> > > annoyed with the witless boring MS bashing that goes on in 
> > 
> > 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? 
> 
> School's exist today. You're going to tell me that you were never forced to
> learn anything ?
> And to answer your question: no. If you want to work in the government
> you're going to have to learn government stuff (aren't some states are now
> forcing government employees to speek spanish/mexican or something due to
> the amount of border immigrants ?).

You missed my point. I said all government communications - which would
include those to citizens. 

> Still Ms is not forcing anyone to do anything, you can allways press delete
> when you get a HTM e-mail if your client still doesn't support this format.

Which would be about as good as trying to have a meeting with two
different conversations happening across the same table at the same
time. 

> > When a solution that works _better_ is available, people will 
> > naturally
> > switch to it. 
> It is occuring right now.

No, you perceive it to be _better_ because you have been sold on the
benefits, applied them globally, and not considered the costs, in some
environments.

> > Microsoft does not operate that way. While the technology
> > exists to define things like standard, extensible file formats
> Does MS have to do everything ? Do you know of any other company that has
> defined/supported such a standard extensible format (Adobe perhaps said they
> would but did they deliver ?).

Commodore/Amiga did pretty well with their IFF formats, which still see
some use today, even though the platform is mostly in dis-use.

XML is of course an example of a true standard of this form, and many
companies are supporting it.

I still use mail that is stored in 'mbox' format. If I had mailbox files
from the first unix machines I had accounts on (~1983) I would still be
able to read them with any of several dozen mail user agent applications
today. Over that ~19 years, many additional headers have shown up in
Internet mail, but I could still use software from the original system
to review my current mailboxes, if I wanted/needed to do so. That's
pretty impressive. mbox format has been supported by almost every
commercial unix vendor I can think of - Sun, DEC, HP, Motorola, AT&T,
ISC, ARIX, Data-General. The only exception that comes to mind was SCO -
who used MMDF by default, instead of mbox. 

> > 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?
> I would probably just download the free viewer from their web site.

Cool. I can run it under NetBSD, right? Oh, darn, that file can't be
read under anything but Windows, hun? (MacOS, which MS must keep alive
for their own protection, doesn't count as a counterexample.)

> > 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 
> 
> I have to assume this quote predates the arrival of Gnome and other
> desktops.....

No, I'd still rather have the power of the UNIX command line. I'm not
limited in what I can do next by the options my desktop provides for me
- I'm only limited by my own skills.

> I'll leave it at that. It's not like this is going to impact the future of
> e-mail or anything.

Probably not, but I think it was worth the time to try to help you
understand that people here aren't against progress, they're likely
against needless featurism, clutter, or market-driven 'functionality'.

If some people here tend to be outspoken about things Microsoft has
done, and continues to do, do not mistake attempts to enlighten the
general public for jealousy of MS's success.

If people call MS 'M$', I read it as a disrespect of MS's motives being
largely cash driven. Using their leverage to put companies out of
business, instead of trying to provide a better product, would be a
classic example of their application of those motives. 

P.S. I notice that you clipped out the rot13 part of my reply. I guess
you couldn't read it with your Microsoft email client? It would be
pretty annoying if all the messages here were in rot13 then, hmm? Other
people are put in the same position when people send HTML to the list.

-- 
David Maxwell, david@vex.net|david@maxwell.net --> Although some of you out
there might find a microwave oven controlled by a Unix system an attractive
idea, controlling a microwave oven is easily accomplished with the smallest
of microcontrollers. - Russ Hersch - (Microcontroller primer and FAQ)