At 13:35 27/10/04 -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
> Utility? That's easy! The system described by Martin's draft is
extremely
> useful. It is implemented by the w3.org mailing list systems, and in my
> work using those mailing lists I've made frequent and much-appreciated use
> of the feature.
Maybe you could provide some concrete examples?
I explained it here:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2004Oct/0050.html
> I find it faintly ironic that one of the best (as in most usable and most
> useful) mailing list services I've used anywhere on the Internet is run by
> the World Wide *Web* Consortium. The archive system is a major factor in
> that usability. Mail archives really take on additional value when they
> become a fully linked and cross-linked part of the Web. For this to
really
> work well --as it does-- the messages really need to be served using a
> hypertext format, such as HTML. I've no objection if others would like to
> design and build systems that serve messages using whatever format they
> like, but to claim that the HTML-served messages are in some sense not
> useful or non-functional is to ignore the daily experience of the many
> people who use them.
I guess the question is this - do you want the archived email messages to
be usable as email messages, or do you want them to be a part of the web?
I don't really care if it's called web or email. What I do like about this
proposal is that it can help me to achieve my goals, by making it easy to
point other people to previous messages, and making it easy for other
people to do the same for me.
It's very difficult to do both, because web browsers tend not to support
message/rfc822 very well.
I suggest that is not because it's fundamentally difficult to do, but
because little need has been felt for such a facility. Where's the itch
here? I think a message/rfc822 plugin for firefox wouldn't be a major
task, if someone felt strongly enough to do it. Given such support, there
might be more demand for archives in RFC822 format. (Maybe it exists, but
a quick search didn't reveal it to me.)
#g
------------
Graham Klyne
For email:
http://www.ninebynine.org/#Contact