I'm certainly as entitled as anyone here to be a grumpy old man and UNIX
bigot, having sent my first UNIX e-mail message in 1975, and posted my first
Internet (ARPANET) mailing list message circa 1979, but the fact is that
standards evolve, markets evolve, and there are good reasons not to remain
tied to the lowest common denominator of the past.
I used text-based UNIX mailers for 21 years before moving to a GUI-based
POP client in 1996. Two years later, I find it remarkable that anyone would
continue to use a mail program that does not fully support MIME or handle HTML
gracefully. While the members of list-managers are a lot of old-timers,
remember that (to use the words of Stephen King in his THE DARK TOWER series)
"the world has moved on".
Realistically, the way to get people to adopt the whizzy new technologies is
to create content that requires them. In this case, that means rich-text mail
messages, MIME attachments, etc. A couple of years ago, I would have whined
about someone sending a (reasonably-sized) GIF or JPG image to a mailing list
I was on; now it's (usually) a pleasure.
It would be unfair to require support for these if the cost of participating
was unreasonable -- but all you need for e-mail rich text and images is a
standard mass-market PC or Mac, not particularly high-end, a color monitor, a
28.8K modem (or better) or LAN Internet access, and an up-to-date free or
cheap mail program. That's not too much to ask.
--
Michael C. Berch
[EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
