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

[Simon Bowring]

>Again, not quite accurate. It is not the "*only* way to maintain
>layout in email."
Oh, but it is!

>Another way would be to use HTML and make sure the originating and
>receiveing email packages are STANDARDS CONFORMANT.
Not true for two reasons:

1. No standards exist for specifying rich text with layout
   in an email, (using HTML or otherwise) so the standards 
   would have to be invented!

and more importantly:

2. HTML is unable to maintain layout between browsers.  It is 
   not designed for layout, it's designed to convey information.  

   You're allowed to "lose" the colour, images etc from an 
   HTML document, you're still within the standard!

   This would be useless for adding markup to email!

   With the advent of HTML 4 and stylesheets, it's now *possible*
   to *specify* detailed layout in HTML for the first time. 

   Only trouble is, it's perfectly legal to ignore this 
   information, and NO TWO browsers support the standard well 
   enough to render HTML the same in all but the most trivial cases.
   IE is quite good at CSS1 stylesheets, but NS is appalling!
   [I'm not surprised, it would be many man-years work to
   write a fully functional HTML+CSS parser and renderer.]

   We spend *days* trying to get some of our web applications 
   (which obviously output in HTML) to render the same on 
   NS and IE!

Have you tried Amaya, the web browser made by w3c (the guys who 
actually *define* HTML]?  It is able to legally interpret HTML 
in two quite different modes, both of which render quite 
differently to IE and NS (which render HTML 3 similarly only 
because they are competitors).

Go to http://w3c.org and get a free copy (for Windows at least).

People don't realise this kinda stuff about HTML, it's UNSUITABLE FOR
AN EMAIL RICH TEXT FORMAT!  I know you don't belive me, but
this is because you make assumptions about HTML that just aren't
true (see w3c and read the specs - I HAVE!) !

Simon

>I'm being difficult to point out to you that you are arguing with
>more or less the same logic that the HTML email camp is: "if you just
>tell people what to use or how to view it, everything will be OK."
>This is true, but it's equally true for HTML email.
No it's not! False assumptions!

>So, it seems to me that we actually are lacking standards for both
>ASCII email and for HTML email.

The web has standards, one of which is known loosely as "HTML",
which  are not too bad for what they are intended for - the 
presentation of information in hyperlinked documents accross
networks on a wide variety of output devices -  IT WAS NEVER 
INTENDED FOR LAYOUT.

With the introduction of stylesheets with HTML 4, the standard
has "buckled" a bit to cope with users trying to "force" layout 
out of it. The CSS1 style sheet standard is highly complex and
hard to implement, which is one reason why it is incompletely
implmented by *every* browser, and poorly implemented or not 
implemented at all by most!

IE5 and Mozzilla are the best interpreters of Stylesheets at the
moment, but even they can't agree.

If you want another illustration of what has do be done to
maintain layout using HTML, get a copy of Word 2000, do a 
"save as HTML" (not a save as compact HTML), and marvel and 
the acres of HTML, JavaScript and XML it uses to try to make sure
the layout is preserved in both NS and IE5!

I'm afraid I do really know what I'm talking about (most of
the time ;-)!

Simon