Jargons of Info Tech industry

[joe at invalid.address]

"T Beck" <Tracy.Beck at Infineon.com> writes:

> Mike Schilling wrote:
> > "Rich Teer" <rich.teer at rite-group.com> wrote in message
> > news:Pine.SOL.4.58.0508250932360.5888 at zen.rite-group.com...
> > > On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, Mike Schilling wrote:
> > >
> > >> Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer
> > >> today already comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser), so
> > >> that a message saved to a file can be read very easily.
> > >
> > > I think you're missing the point: email and Usenet are,
> > > historically have been, and should always be, plain text
> > > mediums.
> >
> > Gosh, if you say they should be, there's no point trying to have an
> > intelligent discussion, is there?
> 
> Not to mention that e-mail is practically to the point where it is
> {not} a plain text medium.  I notice this especially in a corporate
> environment (where, at least where I work, I get at least 10 times the
> number of e-mails at work than I do on my private account) HTML e-mail
> is the de-facto standard.  I have a tendancy to send out plain text
> e-mail, and I'm practically the only one, as HTML formatting is the
> default for the mail client on every corporate machine at my job.

If you're using exchange for email servers it might be reformatting
mail sent as plain text anyway. Waste of bandwidth.

> But let's not forget that most people which send me e-mail personally
> also have HTML tags in e-mail...  So if e-mail {is} a plain text
> medium, somebody needs to tell the general public, because I think they
> must've missed a memo.
> 
> If we argue that people are evolving the way e-mail is handled, and
> adding entire new feature sets to something which has been around since
> the earliest days of the internet, then that's perfectly feasable.
> HTML itself has grown.  We've also added Javascript and Shockwave.  The
> websites of today don't even resemble the websites of 10 years ago,
> e-mail of today only remotely resembles the original, so the argument
> that usenet should never change seems a little heavy-handed and
> anachronistic.

That's a good point, but just because things are evolving doesn't mean
they're making more sense. Html does waste bandwidth, it does open up
avenues for malware that text mail doesn't, etc.

It seems to me that any intelligent person has to turn off so many
"features" in html mail clients that they lose many of what are seen
of as advantages.

I suspect I either missed some of this thread or I'm misunderstanding
some of it. If what the OP was trying to suggest was a more confined
form of html, say, something that doesn't allow links, I'd consider
that a good thing. I doubt anyone will use it though, I think MS wants
all the bells and whistles, and all the embracing and extending it can
do. If they don't support such an html subset for email I suspect it
won't go anywhere.

But why bother? An html subset that takes everything away but
formatting sounds pretty much like what I'm doing right now with
gnus. 

Joe