At 01:57 PM 1/23/99 -0500, Dan Steinberg wrote:
>"Richard J. Sexton" wrote:
>> At 04:26 PM 1/22/99 -0500, Dan Steinverg wrote:
>> >"Richard J. Sexton" wrote:
>> >> At 10:13 AM 1/22/99 +0800, Dave Crocker wrote:
>> >> >If one takes the view that one must only send what everyone is
assured of
>> >> >being able to process, then we will never have any upgrades. No MIME.
>> >Richard, if you can't handle HTML and can't figure out a way around
>> >it, I'll write you a filter (at my normal billing rate <g>).
>> Show me a mailing list where postng in only HTML is accepted and I'll
>> believe you.
>I'm on about 40 of them (about 300 messages/day on the aggregate).
>> Find me even 1% of all interent mailing lists that you won't get yelled
>> at for posting HTML *as well* and I'l believe you.
>Define "yelled at". If it means Richard and one or two others
>complain, I don't buy it. I'd set the bar at 25%. If 25% of a group
>has a problem, that would be significant (maybe even 20%). Until you
>point? Go ahead, ask them how many cannot support HTML in their
>normal mail configuration?
Not willing to take any sides on this and FYI. Most, if not all, MS-Windows
machines can support HTML and MIME attachements. Most use either Netscape,
Eudora, or MS-Outlook mail clients. (The source is a recent customer survey
that MHSC has completed. No, it is not publicly available.) As regards
Unix, if nothing else Netscape Communicator is available for most major
Unices, including Linux. I am unsure about FreeBSD, which Richard is
running, at VRX.NET. Other than Netscape, I am unaware of a common mail
client, available in a unix shell session, that understands HTML and/or
MIME. Frankly, MHSC hasn't looked for one because we advocate WinNTws, for
workstations, and Caldera COL, for servers.
On the general Internet, it would be a fair statement that the vast
majority of systems can process HTML/MIME format. This is only true because
the vast majority of Internet users, these days, are on some form of
windows machine. Of those that aren't, many are on X-windows and have
Netscape Communicator available. However, that is not a fair statement for
the members of this list, of which many are shell account users.
One thing I can say with certitude, if you post HTML on NANOG, jhawk,
rbush, and others of the NANOG leadership will YELL at you very loudly.
Most of the long-time user/leaders of the Internet are still doing so on
Unix shell accounts, as are many system admins.
The main problem with HTML/MIME is that it's very noisy, if you don't have
an HTML/MIME client. This effectively blocks a user, with such a client,
from reading the message. From a communucations context, it burns more
bandwidth, per message, to say essentially the same thing. Personally, I
have no problem with either one. However, I don't make discrete connections
and wait for my mail to download either (100baseTX is *nice*). OTOH, most
users of HTML/MIME capable clients do NOT know how to turn that feature off
(I'm not sure it CAN be turned off on MS-Outlook). So, I would expect more
words on this issue in the future from more sides.
Whoever stated that technology migration is silent?
___________________________________________________
Roeland M.J. Meyer -
e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Internet phone: hawk.lvrmr.mhsc.com
Personal web pages: http://staff.mhsc.com/~rmeyer
Company web-site: http://www.mhsc.com
___________________________________________________
KISS ... gotta love it!
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