[pmmail-list] PMMail 2000 Update

[David M. Nelson]

On Wed, 29 May 2002 10:06:29 +0200, xavier caballe wrote:

>I know most people on this list (but not outside this list) complain about
>HTML, and I respect that... But I think is something like to say 'hey, you
>can write all your documentation stuff with a regular text editor... Why
>are you using a wordprocessor?  Of course, you have to take some security
>considerations when adding this support, but you can easily forget about
>most of the security and privacy issues just no accessing any external
>data such are images and backgrounds.

I'd like to respond as one of those who has expressed a dislike of HTML
mail. I will set the security issue aside, as we seem to agree on that.

Let me say that HTML can have a legitimate use in e-mail, just as a
word processor is the proper tool for certain types of documents
(though not for creating e-mail, as Microsoft would like us all to
think). Having admitted the potential use for HTML doesn't excuse the
95% of the junk I receive in e-mail in which HTML formatting adds
absolutely nothing to the content. The words are the same, only now
they are more "pretty." Someone decides that 14pt red script text
centered on a blue-water bitmap background looks really *cool* and
therefore I must want to read it that way.

Well I've chosen my typefaces and color schemes to be legible on my
monitor and I don't appreciate someone else trying to change that with
no understanding of what they are doing.

Add in the security issues, as well as doubling or tripling the message
size, and HTML e-mail seems to be more trouble than it's worth.

So in closing, I agree with you--keep the ability to write and view
HTML e-mail in the software. Like it or not, that has become an
expectation of modern e-mail software. Please understand that some of
us are making an informed request to disable that feature. :-)

(Darn that new-fangled aych-tee-emm-ell mail! In *my* day we didn't
*have* colored text. It was just ten little green dots on the screen
and you had to memorize the different combinations that made up each
letter. And only one letter was visible at a time, so you had to
memorize every one until the whole message was displayed, and if you
forgot...well that was *TOO BAD* because you couldn't reverse once it
had passed as the computer only had 2K of memory. And that's the way it
was and WE LIKED IT!!)

David M. Nelson

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