OT: Mailformats and overheads

[Joerg Bencke]

before I answer, one other comment : Cant you guys just start t change the
subject, when the contens of a mail changes ? I guess this would help
keeping OT Discusions less hazardous for the rest. Anyway

Steve : Christian knows what he does, even when you disagree on his
motivation. No use saying otherwise, except for beeing rude, so that won't
do here.

Christian :
>1. Yes, some overhead. So what ?

Well, I may be a dino on the net, since I still think netusers should
behave. The netiquette is a good thing and people in general have 3
options :
a) strict rules, which have to be supervised, implemented and enforced by
police or whatever form of commonly accepted authority
b) total chaos, the strongest(thickheadedest/bandwithbigest whatever)
rules and makes life unstandable for the rest
c) everyone keeps to a certain frame of understanding to let all have
optimal use (on average) of the commonly used resources.

And I (IMHO) think type c would be best used on something like the
internet.

HTML in email (IMHO again) by definition is something for the type b
persona, since it
1) easily doubles message sizes.
2) servers seldomly another purpose then "I dont like the color, its
displayed in"
3) does not serve any purpose in terms of protocol info (as the email
header itself), info about the user or security.

_Ok_, HTML can be used differently, and I personally think this email
address link, I saw somewhere is pretty usefull for users, whose email
client does not support emailing from emails in the body, but suppot html
(if there are any mailers so stupid ;-) its the idea itself I like.
HTML put to a use, thought trough and implented with small overhead (well
depends on the
length of your email address :-))

>2. I give more importance to what a message says and looks, than carrying about few bits overhead
Thank you for that, especially for the says part :-9 people, who quote
each mail without shortening them, bug me as well :-) Yet ... a few bits
overhead is not really related to standardencoded html emails from outlook
etc :-)

>4. The overhead of my messages is comparable with some others gigantic signatures and/or excessive quoting
True, so if the other jumps of the bridge, you do it as well ? That is the
same mentality as with all the butt-thowaway-smokers or the
insurance-theft-people "Hey, anybody else does it, so I can too."

The bottom line is however : a lot of people use HTML (BTW, the same is
true for the "reply with quote" freaks) without thinking about it. The
more people use it, the more useless, avoidable overhead filters though
the net. In case of newsgroups multiplied by size of group. And with email
_still_ beeing the #1 in usage, that is a huge waste. If you dont care,
thats fine.
I do, but I also have to pay my phone/isq connection by the minute and
only have a 33.6 modem. And since the situation in the US often is
different, I guess, I will have to suffer through this as well, and not
only trough all-graphic-not-textcomment WWW sites, unreadable unless you
activate Java and load each and every image.

Ok, I am too good for this world. But I actually meet people, who do the
same, and maybe some day, they will be the bigger percentage *"unsilly
hope"-filled face, gazing to the stars*.

Have fun and a nice spring.
Josch

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