HTMLised email

[Simon Bowring]

On Sat, 11 Dec 1999 12:24:04, David Gaskill wrote:

>What's wrong with HTML e-mail anyway? 

1. The internet can only work if people obey the standards 
   described in the RFC documents (amonst others).  Much like
   driving only works well if poeple agree to obey the rules
   (which side of the road you drive on etc).

2. There is no agreed standard for encoding "rich text" emails
   or news messgaes (i.e. those with fonts/colour etc), HTML
   is used but is neither standard nor suitable.
   There is no way of knowing/specifying which features of
   HTML need supporting, so there is no way that HTML-ised emails
   can be guaranteed to work as intended accross different email
   programs even if they both support HTML (they will support differnt
   feature sets).

3. Companies that like to try and generate a monopoly by
   "extending" (i.e. breaking) standards started this standards
   busting "Rich text" email nonsense in an attempt to make 
   people who don't understand the inter-operability issues (
   and why should they?) use the features so that they encourage 
   other people to move to the allededly "better" email software 
   (not just MS, but Lotus and Netscape too for example).

Email does allow you to attach arbitrary files to email, and that is
basically what HTML-ised emails are, an empty (or bare) email with
an HTML doc attatched, Sadly, email software that originates HTML-ised 
mail rarely (of ever) identifies such basics such as what format
of HTML they are using (HTML v1.x/2.x/3.x/4.x etc).

Lets keep email text-based and standards-compliant
so that every one can interchange messages without pain.

Some companies are trying to remove the "inter" for "internet"!

Regards

Simon Bowring
Senior Software Engineer