Life after PMMail

[Simon Bowring]

>I agree with you... 
Very glad to hear it!

>unfortunately the world uses a different standard and HTML is used 
>as email formatting standard. 
>This is a fact, and I am not in a position to change this... 
The trouble is different mailers that support this alleged
"standard", all support it differently, since, erm, no rules (i.e. 
no "standard") has been defined for them to stick to!  It's not helped 
by the fact that the html spec is so big and complex and unsuitable 
for use as a rich text mark-up language, that it makes implementing an 
email client with this functionality 10s of times more complex than it 
should otherwise be, and much less likely to interwork as users expect 
with other mailers.  Still, we want MS and NS those "guardians" of open 
standards, who have invested many man years in producing 
embrace-extend-and-monopolise-the-net HTML renderers) to be virtually 
the only people in town who are in a position to be able to produce 
email program's don't we (no!).

Text *will* be rendered differently in the different mailers (that is
in different fonts, at different sizes, with different line widths and 
heights, resulting in different line wrapping and layout). Some mailers 
only support HTML 3 subsets which can't display the html 4 mail sent by 
more recent versions.

Documents with images (or other mutipart docs) may or may not 
be handled at all; when they are handled, different rules are used 
to encode them.  Some html emails will cause http connections to be 
made or attempted back to the originating machine from some readers, 
etc, etc.  A fine mess!  

HTML mail is also unsurprisingly the mechanism used to transport MS 
email viruses around the net too!

>-Almost everybody is using HTML to send formated messages... 
1. Almost everyone most certainly is not using HTML mail!
2. Almost everyone who is internet literatate does not use HTML!
3. Almost everyone who is internet illiteratate and runs MS s/w
   probably does use HTML, often without knowing it, and certainly
   without understanding the issues!
4. Almost everyone's tried to unscrew a screw with their finger nail. 
   This doesn't mean a finger nail is a good screwdriver, or that it's 
   a good idea, or even that problems won't result from the practice!
   This is about the same level of unsuitability as using HTML for rich
   text.

Finally, the only way to ensure that your clients see the same
as you intended when using HTML-ised mail, is to use the exact
same email program and version as they use (and your clients are
likely to be using a variety of different versions, if not 
programs).

Sorry to hear you'r being "forced" into htmlised email though, 
and I hope you do your best to explain why the practice is not 
good and the results that your clients will see will be 
unpredicatable!

I don't want to start another flame war like last week, so I'll
try to "bite my tongue" regards further follow-ups!

<FONT FACE="   Õ" LANG="ZH-CN" SIZE=3> Regards </FONT>!

Simon