OT: Mailformats and overheads

[Cristian Secara]

On Sat, 17 Apr 1999 10:52:57 +0200, Joerg Bencke wrote:

>I guess this would help
>keeping OT Discusions less hazardous for the rest.

What is 'OT' ?

>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.

Well, in my country there is a byword, something like that: If two peoples are saying you're drunk, then you better go to sleep'.
So I *will* take into consideration your overall objections.

>>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 : [...]

I like to remember that both Outlook Express and Netscape Communicator have the 'Mail Sending Format' option put to 'on' by default. Both mailers are widespread.
Do you think most users are even conscious about what HTML or non-HTML e-mail messages are about ? I personally think this is out of question. There are only few, compared to the worldwide e-mail users.
How can we talk about netiquette on this subject, when neither Microsoft nor Netscape didn't care about it ?

PMMail98 also has 'Enable HTML Formatting by default' put to 'on'. The difference is, it uses a sort of intelligence, in that a message will be sent as text-only if the user don't use any fonts artifacts (you can look at my present message: HTML formatting *is* 'on'; however, it does not contain any HTML).
The exception is that bug, mentioned before by me: by default, a new, blank message has MS Sans Serif font selected; when start typing, it switches automatically to Arial. This is enough to trigger HTML formatting to on, as the mailer thinks you have changed the font during writing.
This happens under Win98; don't remember under Win95; don't know under WinNT.
My workaround: PMMail -> Properties -> Fonts -> Body set to 'Arial', font size 10.

>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.

Outlook Express and Netscape Communicator news readers, both have HTML formatting to 'off'. I don't think there are significant users which put this to 'on'.

>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.

The same situation apply here. The only exception may be that my ISP offer this facility on a given account: full-internet connection, time-based charge; mail-only connection, free.
The telephone line is, however, pay-per-minute ...

>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.

Yes, you are right ... that's why I appreciate Netscape's 'Display images on this page' toolbar button, feeling that Microsoft didn't care about my phone bill :)

Best wishes,
        Cristi