Life after PMMail
David Gaskill
pmmail@rpglink.com
Mon, 27 Mar 2000 13:58:09 +0100
On Mon, 27 Mar 2000 12:17:49 +0200, xavier caballe wrote:
> Maybe we are right, but we have to accomodate to the majority...
>otherwise, we'll be wrong.
Xavi,
Most of the people on this mailing list know a great deal more about
computing than I do; that being said I know a lot more about computing
than many people do and if I want to communicate with these people then,
as you say I, I have got to do it in a way that they can understand.
This was brought home to me recently when I needed to send out
formatted and illustrated documentation to those that responded to an
invitation to a sporting event. After thinking about it I offered those that
responded the documentation as an attachment in one of three formats.
1. Word 97
2. Pdf
3. Zip file containing html
For those that didn't have it I offered to provide simple instructions for
downloading Acrobat Reader.
It turned out that there were quite a few respondents who couldn't use any
of these alternatives.
There were some that apparently couldn't deal with attachments at all. The
downloading and installation of Acrobat defeated most of those who tried
it. There were plenty that couldn't unzip a zip file.
I did contemplate getting another e-mail client that could send fully fledged
html rather than the fairly basic html e-mail of which PMMail is capable. I
wasn't sure how many people would have mail client that would be able to
display it properly and in any case I really didn't want to spend time
learning another mail client.
In the end I put the whole lot up on a website. I did this with some
trepidation because I was concerned that my mailbox would become
jammed with e-mail from those with time on their hands, a computer, and
a variety of mental illnesses. (In fact it worked quite well and some of the
e-mail from the mentally deranged was quite funny). I did contemplate
password protection but decided there this would probably be too
complicated for some.
The nearest thing to a common format is undoubtedly html and if people
need, or more importantly, want to send formatted or illustrated documents
then increasingly they will do so via html e-mail. I have already come
across people that don't know that there is any other kind of e-mail ...
David
David