Stroller wrote: > > I've been wondering for a while why no alternative has been proposed. > HTML was originally considered poor because it wasted bandwidth, HTML > messages being *at least* twice the size of the plain text, but often > several times as large. I wonder if console-based mail-readers were > late in adopting it for that reason, and it gained additional > unpopularity amongst programmers & the technorati as a consequence. > > Nowadays HTML is bad principally because it imposes fonts upon the > reader. I know what size my monitor is & at what size my mail program > should render text. I have an HTML-capable mail reader & have no > objection to the HTML messages sent by Amazon & Deep Discount, because > they are clear & readable - they have expensive design teams who > clearly take a deal of time ensuring that. But a poster to the > Openmoko mailing list a while back formatted his messages not only in > a tasteful green which I'm sure he enjoyed a lot, but also in a tiny > font which was unreadable on my screen. Undoubtedly it looked fine to > him, but I don't know what resolution he was using - 800 x 600??? - > because the characters were about 2mm high on my 20" @ 1600 x 1200. > > What I think would be ideal for email would be a very simple text > markup which allows italics, underline, bold and strikethrough > characters in addition to links. I'd love to be able to convey those > kinds of emphasis to readers, and I'd also love to be able to use > proper clickable links in the body of a text message, but at present I > can't, because I don't think it's appropriate for me to impose > 13-point Verdana on those who prefer Times or Courier in some other size. > > EDIT: I guess a text size +1 for headers would also be appropriate > (+2, -1, -2), bullet points plus superscript and subscript. Clearly > some hashing out would be appropriate, but ideally formatting should > be minimal, so that even displayed as pain-text the formatting is not > intrusive; EG: --strikethough--, /italics/, _underline_ &c. > > I have also found that clients appear inconsistent about how they > apply quoting to HTML messages. At least often if I reply to an HTML > message and change it to plain text then the quoted message magically > looses a level of quoting. Typically I change to plain-text like this > because I've copied & pasted a single sentence out of the quoted > section and it comes out into my own paragraph as blue, the wrong size > and an inconsistent font - this is another grip about HTML. > > I'm surprised by this, and always assumed TinyURL kept their links > forever. Are you sure it's not simply that the post is so old it > points to a target page that no longer exists? It looks like TinyURL > have the capacity for about 2,176,782,336 unique links before they > need to add another digit after the slash. >
I guess my main point was this. Some mailing list people have some set ups that may not work right in certain situations. As I have said, some here are using older mail readers that don't do well, if display at all, html messages. That's what I was told when I first joined here. I also know from being here a long time that if a person does something silly, like sending a 2Mb email or sending HTML that they can't read, they get sent to the dust bin. Also, some people have replied from cell phones or live in countries that charge by the amount of data. The difference between html and text on a list this busy can be a lot. As far tinyurl. I'm not sure how old they were or if they expired or what. It seemed it went to a page that said it was a old link or something but it was a while back. I just know I got it a few times and decided tinyurl is not for me. Dale :-) :-)
