At 11:40 AM +0000 3/18/99, Charles Lindsey wrote:
In <v0410482eb31587e6dec9(_at_)[129(_dot_)46(_dot_)219(_dot_)101]> Laurence Lundblade
<lgl(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com> writes:
I haven't looked at proletext, but will point out that any subtype of
text pretty much went down in flames when we tried sending some
samples around. We tried text/paragraph with a format that was
basically plain. Too many mailers default to treating this as an
attachment.
Clearly such mailers are broken (i.e. non-compliant)
It's true, but...
I think one had to be fairly brutal with non-compliant software. Just post
messages obeying the rules, and when people with non-compliant software
find themselves inconvenienced, then the pressure by them upon the writers
of the software will produce results quicker than any other known method
:-) .
This isn't really the old Internet any more. Most users don't know
one format from another, what the standards, or who the IETF is.
Compliance in their view is more based on whether it works with the
existing installed base rather than any particular standard they
don't even know exists.
Also, I do some amatuer statistics on mail I received and it boils
down to most mail being sent by clients from one of the big five:
Microsoft: MSMail, Outlook, WebTV, Hotmail
Qualcomm: Eudora
AOL/Netscape
IBM: cc:mail, Notes
U of Washington: Pine
I think you'll have to convince one or maybe two that proletext is a
good thing to make it go forward. It seems also that if you think it
has to be a separate type your going to run smack into HTML.
LL