Why this phobia to HTML mail?

[David Gaskill]

On Sun, 17 Sep 2000 20:21:33 -0400, Larry Ebbitt wrote:

>I'm not familiar with the economics involved. I am only interested in
>the OS/2 and Linux versions.  They can befoul the windos stuff all they
>want.  If they can't make money with them, then they will drop them. At
>least I hope so, rather than ruin them.

Like you I am not familiar with the economics of producing OS/2 software 
but I would hazard a guess that it isn't profitable. 

I suppose that there is just a small chance that if the OS/2 version of 
PMMail  was  "befouled" by the addition of html capability  enough people 
might buy it to make the operation viable. 

I now use the Windows version of PMMail having abandoned OS/2 when 
it became obvious that IBM were proposing to do the same thing. The 
performance of this version seems to be every bit as good as that of the 
OS/2 version in spite of the addition of html capability. I find it useful to be 
able to read e-mails sent to me in this format and out of courtesy I reply to 
html e-mails from my clients in the same format. 

I would guess that 95 per cent of the e-mails I receive are composed using 
Outlook Express and PMMail 2000 and seems to read html mail generated 
by this application perfectly adequately. 

I get the impression that you feel that html e-mail will bring an end to 
civilisation as we know it but I see no evidence of this. Then maybe none 
of those quaintly named RFCs on the subject of html e-mail but I suspect 
that the de facto standard is rapidly becoming Outlook Express. 

Large numbers use this application,with or without html formatting, 
because it enables them to communicate with other people; if it didn't they 
wouldn't. 

There is no body that issues RFCs for the English language; it evolves,  
usage and conventions change and a lexicographers record these changes 
but don't initiate them. There are some here in the UK that deplore the 
new words and changing usage often initiated by your compatriots; if they 
knew what html was I don't doubt they would deplore its use in e-mails ...

David