Re: HTML email
At 12:24 AM 5/16/00 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, when we were designing the MIME spec, we went to great lengths to cover all the bases - in fact, I've seen one very good use of multipart/alternative by somebody with crippling RSI. He got into the habit of sending commentary to a mailing list as multipart/alternative - one part being a *very* brief summary of his commentary (usually a sentence or two tops), and the other being a message/external-body pointing at a (usually longer) audio file that he'd record in greater detail - this was in the days before good speech-to-text software. Yes, it probably violated the letter of the law just a bit, but it was certainly in the spirit of it.. Interesting... nothing is new under the sun, etc. Recently, in considering designs for content negotiation in e-mail, I considered exactly that model (which is, as far as I can tell, entirely within the letter of the law). In the end it was rejected for purely pragmatic reasons -- that proper support for multipart/alternative is not sufficiently widely available. (I've just been to WWW9, where one of the themes has been mobile data. One recurring idea there was the extent to which the problems of mobile data and accessibility for persons with constrained abilities are, at a purely technical level, facets of the same problem.) #g Graham Klyne ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
RE: HTML email
Perhaps you could clarify for us, who falls into which category? -Scot Mc Pherson, N2UPA -Sr. Network Analyst -ClearAccess Communications -Ph: 941.744.5757 ext. 210 -Fax: 941.744.0629 -mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -http://www.clearaccess.net -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 10:12 AM To: Bruce Campbell Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: HTML email On Fri, 19 May 2000 13:51:35 +1000, Bruce Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Just a quick survey on the last 513 messages seen in the IETF list, based on X-Mailer header: 29 exmh OK, let's make it 30 for exmh ;) But seriously, there's a big disparity between counting the messages *posted* and the MUAs being used to *READ* the messages. I'm willing to bet that the traditional posters, the professional lurkers, and the newbies are three disjoint groups, with quite possibly different expectations regarding mail software. I'm willing to bet that the newbies don't know what hit them, the traditional posters are savvy enough to deal with anything, and the complaints are mostly coming from the lurkers -- Valdis Kletnieks Operating Systems Analyst Virginia Tech
Re: HTML email
Sorry to prolong (and further degrade) this already overlong thread, but somehow the one-upsmanship (or -downsmanship I suppose) about who has the most primitive email environment reminded of the venerable item below. My only excuse is that it's a Friday in May ... - RL "Bob" (proud Pine user, of course) --- WARNING: Nerd humor follows From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (GUNNAR HORRIGMO) Subject: Re: Help with XMS mailer on my Game-Boy? Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 18:53:02 GMT [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Randy Wong) writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Daniel M Silevitch) writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Steven Marcotte) writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Babak Gohari) writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tilden-Master of Illogic) writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David Lutz) writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Daniel M Silevitch) writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Brat Wizard) writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Michael Schmahl [Black-Robe Mage] writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes 22161-bunz writes: Brett G Person writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: IronEagle writes: Matt Welsh writes: Right! I run System V on my VIC-20! H...well, I am getting SVR4 for my HP 48SX. HA! _I'm_ just finishing up a port of VMS for my Timex Sinclair! Top THAT! I'm running NextStep on Atari 2600 Video Game System. Just last night I was able to get Windows to boot on my Sears PONG game. I am replying to this message with my built-in VAX Mailer on my Game-Boy. I just installed a 10 Gigabyte Drive to handle all the replies! However, it only runs at 230,000 Baud due to the large drive slowing it down. I fear I will not be getting news any longer... The batteries on my calculator-watch are running out. My calculator-watch is solar... And if I turned off the lights, NO ONE would be getting news... Feh. I'm so slick NASA just awarded ME the TERADATA contract to run on my TV remote! They liked my proposal mainly because I'm ALSO able to shoehorn in the TEXAS SUPERCOLLIDER computations between commercials! Beat THAT! Well, well, well. SSC calculations, huh. I built a system out of 2 inches of wire, 3 pennies and a AA battery that does realtime calculations of particle vectors during the Big Bang. A complete simulation of the first 2 years of the life of the universe, accurate to the theoretical limit, takes about 5 seconds. And you guys think you are so great. I just spent the last half hour getting X11 to run on my slide rule. I am still having problems connecting it to the net around here, but I would welcome any suggestions. So what!!! I'm running Xinitrc, TWMRC, Internet, and 27 muds off of a paperclip. Not to mention the fact that I am designing a new form of television with 7000 pixels based off a piece of tissue paper. Next!!! Man, that's baby stuff. I'm running a particle accelerator utilizing matter-antimatter reactions in my doorknob, and calculating everything in the fourth dimension using a single dip switch and a large glass of water. Child's play, I have an old piece of cheese that is, at this very moment, raytracing an actual model of the universe five hours from now, while at the same time calculating the heat produced from the new intel Pentium. And you people think that you are hackers! I'm currently engaged in a project which involves simultaneous simulation of multiple universes (To see what would happen if various constants change. Pi=8.4 is an interest- ing one.) My hardware consists of a single wooden pencil (no paper). With it, I can do real-time simulations of 2^32 universes in parallel. You guys are wimps!! I've just finished converting a microwave oven into a paradimensional teleportation device. The only problem I'm having so far is that my breakfast bagel keeps disappearing!! May have to eat it raw . . . Sorry, that's my fault. I'm afraid that the high-energy laser-pumped negentropic vortex generator I made from my own nostril hair, which is currently cranking out entire new universes at the rate of 7.6 per picosecond, was breaking the FCC emissions limits and gronking your microwave's control panel. It should work properly now. Also, my cat Arthur was FTPing hundreds of terabytes of PD software from Epsilon Eridani in the year 4741 A.D. over the faster-than-light Ethernet interface I built for him, and this may have been loading the Net a little yesterday. My sincere apologies to everyone who noticed any performance degradation. Damn, I thought I was doin' some really advanced RD. But I only have a humble feather pen with built in spell checking. It checks all languages since Adam Eve plus a few forthcoming languages. But after what I've seen here, that's not good enough for a Nobel Prize..I have to work harder... Maybe some of the languages from outer space will help ?? I just have to use my FingerNail TimeUniverse Transporter(tm) to get there and learn them.
Re: HTML email
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 23:54:01 -0500 (CDT) From: Tim Salo [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Loop: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 13:51:35 +1000 (EST) From: Bruce Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: HTML email [...] tytso I wonder how many people are still using plain-text, tytso non-HTML enabled mail readers? ... Just a quick survey on the last 513 messages seen in the IETF list, based on X-Mailer header: If I count correctly, your list contains 284 samples. I suspect that a good number of the remaining 229 mail messages were created by older mailers that don't generate an X-Mailer header. and it's likely that most of the 229 mail messages created by "older mailers" don't deal with HTML, and possibly not with MIME, either. - Ted (who is still using emacs RMAIL to read his mail)
Re: HTML email
On Mon, 15 May 2000, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: tytso I wonder how many people are still using plain-text, tytso non-HTML enabled mail readers? It still happens on some tytso mailing list, where someone will send a base-64 encoded tytso html'ified message (usually using MS Outlook), and someone tytso will send back "try again in English; I don't read that MIME tytso crap." Just a quick survey on the last 513 messages seen in the IETF list, based on X-Mailer header: 1 Allaire 1 CrossPoint 1 dtmail 1 Eudora 1 KMail 1 Lotus 1 Netscape (Messenger Express) 1 Posta (Posta elettronica Internet di Microsoft/MAPI - 8.0.0.4211) 2 Mew 2 Mulberry/2.0.0 5 Mutt 5 VM 5 Windows (Eudora Pro) 25 ELM 29 exmh 28 Pine (based on Message-ID strings) 34 QUALCOMM (later versions of Eudora) 37 Internet (Internet Mail Service, another Microsoftism) 52 Microsoft (Outlook) 54 Mozilla Most of these do natively understand HTML email to a certain extent, or can be configured to pass HTML email to an outside viewer, and a small number send HTML email by default (based on personal experience). I don't know of any in the above list that cannot be convinced to send plain text. Please remember that the capabilities of a given client are different from the (possibly bad in some cases) defaults set by the distributers/authors of a given client. Perhaps the focus should be on the defaults, rather than blindly saying ``Mailer X is bad.'' --==-- Bruce. Sysadmin, APNIC
Re: HTML email
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 13:51:35 +1000 (EST) From: Bruce Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: HTML email [...] tytso I wonder how many people are still using plain-text, tytso non-HTML enabled mail readers? ... Just a quick survey on the last 513 messages seen in the IETF list, based on X-Mailer header: [...] Most of these do natively understand HTML email to a certain extent, or can be configured to pass HTML email to an outside viewer, and a small number send HTML email by default (based on personal experience). I don't If I count correctly, your list contains 284 samples. I suspect that a good number of the remaining 229 mail messages were created by older mailers that don't generate an X-Mailer header. I assume this message doesn't contain an "X-Mailer: Berkeley Mail forever" header. (Ok, ok. I have been known to use vi as my HTML editor, too...) -tjs And, from NANOG (I deleted most of the headers, but I didn't see an X-Mailer:): From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Please Format Your Posts Date: Sat, 13 May 2000 22:13:09 -0700 I know that I am old curmudgeonly now, but surely I cannot be the only NANOG person who uses UCB Mail on occasion? Or is it a lost cause to expect people to be concerned about the number of characters on a line, when they are arguing that we shouldn't worry about the number of globally-known routing prefixes? Sean. (who could buy a fancy email system, but doesn't want one at home and who could buy a big-iron router, but doesn't want one at home)
Re: HTML email
At 17:32 15.05.2000 -0600, Vernon Schryver wrote: When was the last time you received a multipart/alternative message that did not make the sender look stupid, malicious, or both? I can't remember ever receiving any other kind of multipart/alternative. FWIW, as a lone Eudora user in a pond of Outlookers, I find Eudora's HTML rendering of messages where people have used Outlook's "reply inline using a different color" to be slightly less hideous than Outlook's idea on how to demontstrate that it is not trivial to make a legible rendering of this particular function in ASCII. Even if you want to argue that using this Outlook function makes the sender look stupid, there's value for me as the recipient in seeing the HTML rendering and not the ASCII rendering. Small data point. Harald -- Harald Tveit Alvestrand, EDB Maxware, Norway [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: HTML email
At 02:12 16-05-00 , Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: It seems to be usually the case, for most messages that I've seen, that there's *no* added value to the HTML version. I.e., other than adding BR at the end of lines, and using microsoft-specific font settings at the beginning of each paragraph (usually all the same), there's nothing to be gained by using HTML except for bloating the message. So one question to ask is "why send HTML at all" in those cases? It would be nice if MUA's could detect this case, and only send plain-text, and reserve HTML only for when it's actually adding something of value. Its not uncommon for sales folks to use bold or colour in fonts to highlight some item they want the reader to pay attention to. Its a matter of opinion whether this is good value. I will note that I routinely discard all HTML-only or RichText-only email without bothering to try to read it. So folks who want me to read something had better be sending at least US-ASCII plain-text. Its well known that I'm an old fogey, so this likely surprises no one. I wonder how many people are still using plain-text, non-HTML enabled mail readers? It still happens on some mailing list, where someone will send a base-64 encoded html'ified message (usually using MS Outlook), and someone will send back "try again in English; I don't read that MIME crap." I do not normally have an HTML-enabled mail reader at hand at work. For that matter, its not unheard of for me to read mail over a real TTY (or telnet or ssh). My mail readers _do_ comply with MIME, but attachments get saved to the file system where I can read them by opening a separate application viewer. Over a TTY, it is intrinsically hard to display fancy text. For HTML or RichText, I just don't bother with the second application, ever. For a long time, if you wanted to guarantee that messages issued by your MUA would be read, it was wise to send it both in plain-text and HTML form, with the plain-text form first --- and non-base-64 encoded if at all possible. For certain recipients, this is still the case. I'm one of those recipients, so I'd much rather have both plain-text and fancy, with plain-text first. Ran [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: HTML email
On 5/15/00 at 9:12 PM -0400, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: It seems to be usually the case, for most messages that I've seen, that there's *no* added value to the HTML version. I.e., other than adding BR at the end of lines, and using microsoft-specific font settings at the beginning of each paragraph (usually all the same), there's nothing to be gained by using HTML except for bloating the message. So one question to ask is "why send HTML at all" in those cases? It would be nice if MUA's could detect this case, and only send plain-text, and reserve HTML only for when it's actually adding something of value. Some MUA's do just that. pr -- Pete Resnick mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Eudora Engineering - QUALCOMM Incorporated
Re: HTML email
"Theodore Y. Ts'o" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I wonder how many people are still using plain-text, non-HTML enabled mail readers? It still happens on some mailing list, where someone will send a base-64 encoded html'ified message (usually using MS Outlook), and someone will send back "try again in English; I don't read that MIME crap." I still use plaintext mail readers such as elm, pine, even /usr/ucb/Mail. :) I prefer to save the attachment off and use a separate program to read it later, rather than to launch it from the mail program. from the old school, --gregbo
HTML email
Vernon Schryver wrote: The practice of sending both HTML and cleartext of supposedly the same message reflects very poorly on those who do it intentionally and on those who cause MUA's to trick others into doing it unintentionally. Never mind the security issues, but consider only the wastes of disk space, CPU processing, network bandwidth, and the inevitable differences between the two versions. If the two messages were the same, then there would be no excuse for sending both. If they differ, then one must be wrong, and sending both is worse than a waste. So why does multipart/alternative exist? -- /==\ |John Stracke| http://www.ecal.com |My opinions are my own.| |Chief Scientist |=| |eCal Corp. |"I lost an 7-foot boa constrictor once in our| |[EMAIL PROTECTED]|house." --Gary Larson on his youth | \==/
Re: HTML email
--On Monday, 15 May, 2000 18:22 -0400 John Stracke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Vernon Schryver wrote: The practice of sending both HTML and cleartext of supposedly the same message reflects very poorly on those who do it intentionally and on those who cause MUA's to trick others into doing it unintentionally. Never mind the security ... So why does multipart/alternative exist? (i) For those few situations in which there is information content in a "rich" fancy display form that cannot be rendered in a weaker form that where it is important to get some idea of the content through. This is clearly a judgement call on the part of the sender, but the usual mindless attachment of an HTML part to a plain-text message (to which I assume that Vernon is most strongly objecting) doesn't add any more information, just a bit of formatting that the receiving MUA could probably figure out from a text message if the developer and user were adequately motivated. (ii) For situations in which the meaning of multiple rendering is presumably the same but the string-content is very different. E.g., one could in theory send a message out in several different languages, tagging each, and permitting the receiving MUA to select the message that best matches the knowledge/usage/skills of the reader. Of course, the security issues in the latter case are the same as those that exist anytime you are handed text in a language you don't understand and some other text that proports to be an accurate translation of it. john
Re: HTML email
Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 20:11:45 -0400 From: John C Klensin [EMAIL PROTECTED] The practice of sending both HTML and cleartext of supposedly the same message reflects very poorly on those who do it intentionally and on those who cause MUA's to trick others into doing it unintentionally. Never mind the security ... So why does multipart/alternative exist? (i) For those few situations in which there is information content in a "rich" fancy display form that cannot be rendered in a weaker form that where it is important to get some idea of the content through. It seems to be usually the case, for most messages that I've seen, that there's *no* added value to the HTML version. I.e., other than adding BR at the end of lines, and using microsoft-specific font settings at the beginning of each paragraph (usually all the same), there's nothing to be gained by using HTML except for bloating the message. So one question to ask is "why send HTML at all" in those cases? It would be nice if MUA's could detect this case, and only send plain-text, and reserve HTML only for when it's actually adding something of value. This is clearly a judgement call on the part of the sender, but the usual mindless attachment of an HTML part to a plain-text message (to which I assume that Vernon is most strongly objecting) doesn't add any more information, just a bit of formatting that the receiving MUA could probably figure out from a text message if the developer and user were adequately motivated. I wonder how many people are still using plain-text, non-HTML enabled mail readers? It still happens on some mailing list, where someone will send a base-64 encoded html'ified message (usually using MS Outlook), and someone will send back "try again in English; I don't read that MIME crap." For a long time, if you wanted to guarantee that messages issued by your MUA would be read, it was wise to send it both in plain-text and HTML form, with the plain-text form first --- and non-base-64 encoded if at all possible. For certain recipients, this is still the case. - Ted
Re: HTML email
On Mon, 15 May 2000 18:22:00 EDT, John Stracke [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: So why does multipart/alternative exist? Well, when we were designing the MIME spec, we went to great lengths to cover all the bases - in fact, I've seen one very good use of multipart/alternative by somebody with crippling RSI. He got into the habit of sending commentary to a mailing list as multipart/alternative - one part being a *very* brief summary of his commentary (usually a sentence or two tops), and the other being a message/external-body pointing at a (usually longer) audio file that he'd record in greater detail - this was in the days before good speech-to-text software. Yes, it probably violated the letter of the law just a bit, but it was certainly in the spirit of it.. Also, remember that we designed it in 1991 or so - the infamous Green Card Lottery was still 3 years away, AOL wasn't the majority owner of several northern Virginia counties, and the concept of a point-and-drool interface for the masses didn't exist yet. We designed it for the Internet we were hoping for, not for the one that we actually got Valdis Kletnieks Operating Systems Analyst Virginia Tech
