[pmmail-list] hyper-text?

[Frank Winkler @home]

On Mon, 29 Jul 2002 18:06:13 +0100 (BST), Simon Bowring wrote:

 >Anyone here experienced in professional level web-design (I don't 
 >mean people who earn their crust at it, I mean people that have
 >a deep understanding of the issues), will know how difficult it 
 >is to make web-pages and web-applications etc that either look
 >as the user intended or work "properly" accross even a half-dozen 
 >different browsers. Considering  HTML and browers were *designed* 
 >for each other this is a poor state of affairs, the situation
 >is worse for email clients because HTML and the other w3c standrads 
 >have no consideration for any of the special needs of an email 
 >client!


 >There should obviously be no issue with sending files in various 
 >formats as attachments (HTML, PDFs, Word, GIFs, PNGs, WMFs,  etc etc), 
 >but "forcing" email clients to have to understand any or all of 
 >these "foreign" file formats is not in the spirit of the email
 >standrads and is unltimately doomed to failure and tears, since 
 >the needs of different user communities are so different!
 >
 >This is the cause of the continuous passionate arguments re 
 >plain-text vs HTML emails!
 >
 >If you want to exchange WYSIWYG docs use (e.g.) PDFs
 >If you want to exchange text (information) use (plain)-text
 >
 >Opening an attached PDF should open a PDF file viewer like Acrobat,
 >opening an image file should open an image viewer, and opening an HTML
 >file should open a web-browser!


 >Lastly there's the problem of user ignorance.  An email user (say
 >my aging mother) should be able to be confident that what she sends is
 >what is received. In the (ASCII) past, the only variation centred 
 >around line lengths and wrapping etc, which netiquette gave defacto
 >standards for and many email clients were implemented in ways that
 >supported this - all this is hundreds of times worse with HTML 
 >email! It's a mess!

Full ACK!!! :)

Regards

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frank Winkler                                                frank@consol.de
ConSol GmbH
Franziskanerstr. 38                                   Voice +49 89 45841.275
81669 Munich - Germany                                  Fax +49 89 45841.189



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