Colored Backgrounds

[David Gaskill]

On Mon, 13 Dec 1999 14:42:30 +0000 (GMT), Simon Bowring wrote:

>>You and I are probably the only subscribers to this mailing list that 
don't 
>believe that 
>>HTML e-mail will lead to the end of civilisation as we know it - tread 
>carefully .
>
>Or at least tread courteously :-)
>
>I regard it as a sign of ignorance (at best), or contempt for 
>other users (at worst) to originate HTML messages (ditto for 
>messages in a word processor format when text would have done).

I more or less agree with you here, (Oh dear, this will never do), if the e-
mail is destined either for someone you haven't corresponded with before 
or a mailing list. The general idea is to communicate and if you address a 
list, (particularly this one), in HTML there will be some who cannot read 
your postings and some who will become infuriated at your ignorance of  
conventions. 

>If you want to attach a PDF, HTML, JPEG, MPEG etc, that's fine, 
>*provided you know* that the recipient is expecting it, sadly
>many email packages *default* to HTML, and many users do not
>even know they are "breaking the rules".

That is certainly true. I receive a fair bit of the e-mail in HTML format 
from those that I am pretty sure have no idea of what the difference 
between ASCII and HTML is. PMmail reads it fine so I don't worry. 

You leave off your list of formats the one that most business users are of 
the Internet are most likely to be able to read. Word. 

Quite often I will say to a client "I can send you the document concerned 
in either Word or pdf format - please let me know which you would 
prefer." The vast majority prefer Word and most will say 97 . Part of the 
reason for this may be that it is easy to annotate or edit a Word file and 
this is not easy to do in Acrobat even if you have Exchange. with one 

>The bandwidth argument is of very much reduced importance
>nowadays but will become more important as more and more email 
>is passed down slow wireless (often 9600 baud) links to PDAs 
>and mobile phones with limited displays); the standards argument 
>is, however, crucial!

I must confess that I don't understand the reason for this "Internet on a 
mobile phone" thing. If I can put the phone in my pocket it is not going to 
be much good for reading or composing documents - my mobile phone 
will already received simple text messages and I can't see how it could do 
any more - maybe I am missing some vital point ... 

>It is a matter of life and death to drive according to the 
>rules of the road ("The Highway Code" in the UK), so most
>of us understand the reason for obeyance.
>
>Sadly perhaps, it is only a matter of courtesy to obey internet 
>standards, however as more and more suppliers ship standards
>extending rubbish (started with web browsers and now also with 
>email and news clients), we see less and less interoperability
>between different suppliers' offerings.  People living in a 
>PC/Windows centric universe have no idea that there are *millions* 
>of computer users who have a text mode screen in front of them e.g. 
>millions of IBM 3270 terminal users, many tens of thousands of email 
>enabled mobile phone users (set to rapidly grow to 10s of millions),  
>people using dial-up links to unix boxes etc, etc).

This seems to me to be akin to suggesting that digital television should not 
be transmitted because there are large numbers of people who only have 
analogue receivers.

>Using HTML for formatted text is just as "valid" as using RTF, PDF, 
>SGML, Word, Wordperfect, PostScript formats etc - i.e. a standards 
>compliant mail client won't  "understand" the message and will 
>display it as an attachment requiring either the user to be able 
>to read the format directly, or that he has a suitable application 
>that can understand the encoding.
>
>There would be nothing to prevent people building a wordperfect 
>renderer into an email package, much as they have built an HTML 
>renderer into them (indeed early MS email software used a 
>completely made-up MS binary format, completely meaningless to 
>anything else), but it's NO BLOODY GOOD unless *ALL* vendors do 
>it and for this there needs to be decent workable standards set 
>(not just "it looks a bit like HTML might solve a couple of 
>the issues, despite the fact it's a complex splintered standard 
>with scant regard for security etc"), which must also include 
>a fall-back mode for clients that pre-date the standard.

It is not possible to compel vendors to do anything. The standards they 
adopt will be those that they judge to be the most generally acceptable 
and therefore the most profitable. Many standards are set these days, de 
facto, by Microsoft. I get shouted at when I say this but it's not a value 
judgment just an observed fact. 

>The fact that some email clients understand (some undefined subset
>of) HTML directly is counterproductive to interoperability; it just 
>encourages the ignorant use of use of email.

I really don't see interoperability as such an imperative when considering 
communications software. The  basic "interoperability" is built into the 
Internet - its the  ASCII e-mail we are using now. If I open my 
correspondence with anybody using any other  standard then it is 
nobody's fault but my own if I fail to communicate; but once I have 
established via this medium that we both have Acrobat or can both 
speaks Serbo Croat or whatever then communication can proceed using 
the agreed  medium. 


David