On 28 Jun 2000, at 10:39, Istvan Berkeley wrote:
> I came across a compelling reason to stick to text only mail over the
> weekend. I was up in Canada and could only access my e-mail via a bare
> telnet link. This put me back into the world of elm, vi, etc. As a
> consequence, I could only easily read text only mail. The one bit of
> HTML mail which did arrive was readable, but only just.
IMO, this is no more compelling than arguing that because you found
yourself stranded with only a model-33 TTY that WE SHOULD ALL GO BACK TO
MONOCASE TEXT AND STOP WITH THE FANCY STUFF...
Now, there *is* reason, often good reason, for *some* forums to
require/prefer "plain text" because it is pretty much universal [the
hackers keeping their mod-33's still working notwithstanding..:o)], but
the point was (at least _my_ point was) that for _most_ folk, just-plain-
ascii is really passe and ugly. Almost everyone *FOR*EVERYTHING*ELSE*,
from their correspondence to the articles they read and write to the
presentations they make, well to *EVERYTHING*, use real, standard
typographic conventions and techniques... It is just hard to argue that
email is _so_special_ that it, and only it, among the ways available for
folks to communicate in this day and age should still be paying homage to
the 70s and VT-100s and all that...
> A second reason for favouring text only mail is that there are still a
> few non-MIME compliant mail systems out there, amazingly enough. There
> is one at John's Hopkins U. for example. I am a great believer in
> backward compatibility.
GREAT... SHOULDN"T UPSET THOSE FOLK WITH UPPERCASE-ONLY TERMINALS THEN,
EITHER, RIGHT?
Truth is that at some point you have to decide that the standards have
been in placed long enough that _everyone_ should expect them to be
honored and supported and those that can't/won't should just be left
behind... MIME isn't some new-kid-on-the-block mail standard... it is
pretty settled and has been for some time.
I, too, am a fan of backwards compatibility, but I was glad to see NCP
die and be replaced by TCP... and yes, some hosts left the ARPAnet never
to return [because no one wanted to bother (or could) reimplementing the
drivers in the bowels of the OS]... at some point you have to declare
that something is "official" and non-compliant folks are on their own...
IMO, "MIME", per se,passed *THAT* juncture long ago...
/Bernie\
--
Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Pearisburg, VA
--> Too many people, too few sheep <--
