don't like HTML email? here's your fix.

[David Gaskill]

On Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:38:43 +0300, Cristian Secara wrote:

>But imagine I am saying this to an average computer user: Outlook
>Express mailer, produced by the software giant Microsoft, does not
>conform to standards; instead, PMMail mailer, produced by a small
>software company called Blueprint Software, is a standard reference.
>
>Who do you think will believe me ?
>Or, if they do, who do you think will care about ?

Cristian,

Few outside this mailing list will believe you and even fewer will care. 

The French government, alarmed at the number of English words that 
were being absorbed into the French language, established a 
commission for standardising French usage. It invented words, quite a 
few in the computing field, to replace the English terms that most 
Frenchmen were using. 

Do you think anybody took any notice? 

(Maybe us Brits should establish a commission to stop people on the 
other side of the pond misspelling words such as "colour" and  
"programme"?!)

English is the language of the Internet not simply because the 
Americans invented the Internet and there are more American users 
than any other nationality, but because it is by far the most popular 
second language. 

Word is the most commonly used format for the exchange of business 
documents not because anybody has said it is a standard but because 
Windows is the dominant operating system and most people have got 
Word. 

Outlook Express is the most widely used mail client and while it has yet 
to achieve the dominance of Word it is well on the way to becoming a 
de facto standard. 

It is argued that unless "standards" are enforced (by whom?) then the 
Internet will turn into the Tower of Babel. No chance. English is the 
"standard" language of the Internet because more people can 
understand it than any other language. 

Like it or not Windows and Windows applications are becoming 
"standards" for the same reason. 

David

David