Excerpts from internet.ietf-822: 13-Nov-91 Re: /alternative
jknowles(_at_)binky(_dot_)arc(_dot_)nasa(_dot_) (1269)
I'm going to take your word for this, given
your experience with Andrew, and the relative ease of implementation.
Well, that's a heavy responsibility to lay on me, so I should be more
explicit about my experience and observation regarding Andrew (*and*
other existing multimedia systems such as Slate & NeXT).
The observation is that people tend to use them primarily for text-only mail.
The interesting question, of course, is: Why? One possible answer is
that multimedia mail isn't useful, but the experiences of a few
homogeneous communities, where multimedia mail has become ubiquitous,
contradicts this.
My *hypothesis* is that the real inhibiting factor is the problems
involved in sending mail to people who are not known to use the same
multimedia system. If my hypothesis is correct, then a mandatory
multipart/alternative mechanism may help to break the logjam, as it
were. I'm actually fairly optimistic that this is the case, but I
wanted to be clear here on where the line should be drawn between my
experience/observation and my speculation. -- Nathaniel