In the beginning...

[Michael Vislocky]

On Wed, 15 Dec 1999 14:14:00 -0500 (EST), Rodney R. Korte wrote:

>>The first printed electronic messages were all upper case and no
>>punctuation.
>
>Of course, in relation to the message size argument that is the
>reason for complaints of HTML use in email, the actual size of a
>message written with all caps is EXACTLY the same as the size of
>a message written with mixed case.

The early transmission codes were as few a 5 bits.  Early bit rates
were very slow and the limited bandwidth forced efficient transmission.

On the message size argument...

Web sites have evolved dramatically over the last few years.  They
started out as mostly text.  Increased dependence on the Web will force
all of the components if the internet to get bigger, faster and
cheaper.  Email will always have the benefit of improving technology. 

The intelligent author will still have to consider that some of his
work may end up on a monochrome cell phone display.  But we don't want
to set email standards for the tiniest, slowest component, do we?
Mike