On 25 Feb 99 at 21:07, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
[on bulky HTML]
> Is this a valid reason to be against HTML in email? Tactically, yes;
> strategically, no; it's a fairly well-defined technical problem
> with a relatively straightforward technical solution.
Hmm. Most auto-generated HTML is dire: you just have to look at how
bad the output is from the available WYSIWYG web-editings tools to
see gow bad, You know, the sort of "you don't need to know HTML!
create a web page in 3 nanoseconds" stuff.
So this isn't just a problem restricted to the HTML generators used
for email -- it's a generic with all the HTML created by
mass-market software. That's what those of us who maintain serious
websites generally use a combinaton of hand-editing and Perl scripts,
or other such tools -- it's the only way to reliably generate good
HTML.
Given the reality that auto-generated HTML doesn't meet those
sotandards, and that the mass-market mailers which generate spew out
lots of useless guff as well as some positively unhelpful things
(like fixed font sizes), I think it's highly unlikely that the actual
HTML we encounter in email is going to improve, and that the overhead
will continue to be outrageous -- particularly for short messages.
I send lots of different stuff out to mailing lists, and I've never
yet needed to use HTML. Why add something which justs clogs up
bandwidth and isn't legible for the vast number of users who don't
have HTML mail-readers? So the lists I run all have LISTSERV's
NOHTML command set.
Best wishes,
Claire
--
Claire McNab -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
