At Sun, 19 Jul 2009 04:50:05 +0100, Noah Slater wrote: > > On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 09:37:04PM -0600, lee wrote: > > On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 10:51:05PM +0100, Noah Slater wrote: > > > On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 03:37:32PM -0600, lee wrote: > > > > > To the best of my knowledge, it isn't defined anywhere. But that > > > > > doesn't matter. > > > > > The common understanding of an attachment is that it is a file, with > > > > > a filename, > > > > > that has been sent as a separate item from the message. > > > > > > > > Well, then most people have a wrong understanding. > > > > > > This is an absurdly prescriptivist statement. > > > > I'm not sure what "prescriptivist" means. > > In other words, if "most people" think "attachment" means "X" then, by > definition, attachment means "X" - regardless of your personal preference for > what it should mean. This is how language works.
Ah, I see what you mean. But aren't RFCs prescriptive by nature? And if they are, it's silly to say that a statement resulting of an interpretation of an RFC is "absurdly prescriptive". --- The interpretation can be wrong, but that's another question. > > A simple email message doesn't have any HTML components. > > That depends on what you mean by "simple" sure does > > You probably wouldn't get any valid results from such a survey because > > the percentage of people who wouldn't know what you're talking about > > would be too high. > > I think that would probably support my thesis. Heh. I don't see how invalid results could support a hypothesis based on them. If you ask 100 people the way to the museum while having a hypothesis that you should go to the right and about 90 of them tell you that they don't know what you're talking about, would you think that the answer you got from those 90 people supports your hypothesis? Or would you rather ignore their answers?
