From: "Bob Wyman" <bob(_at_)wyman(_dot_)us>
The overwhelmingly vast majority of the use of HTML is
at best a waste of bandwidth and CPU cycles.
This is, at best, a representation of a personal, subjective
opinion. The reality is that there is great demand for "rich text"
messaging and there always has been. There are many clear indicators
that large numbers of people like to both send and receive HTML
formatted messages. This demand is not new.
I find your claim even more of personal, subjectve, and inaccurate.
As you say, there has been a great and legitimate demand for "rich
text messaging," but the vast, overwhelming majority of HTML email
uses nothing that might be called "rich text messaging," unless you
equate soft line breaks with rich text. The vast majority of users
do not use any sort of formating including bold and italics in their
personal mail. They can barely manage to turn on spell checking.
Essentially all of that great demand for rich text is from sales
professionals of one sort or another and other people writing formal
message, and they are generally unable to manage more than what might
be called Powerpoint-HTML.
As far back as 1981, when I first started selling one of the
first "corporate" email systems, Digital's ALL-IN-1 office, customers
were asking for and often demanding "rich text" or "high quality" email
messaging capabilities. If anything, the demand for such a capability
has increased over time.
Of course, but how much of that "high quality email" is used except
in various kinds of sales presentations? The overwhelmingly vast
majority of email is informal. It makes as much sense to say that
much email should use HTML as to claim the same for SMS....don't tell
me that some sort of 3G cellphone gateway is going to use HTML for
SMS because I'll believe you, and because it would support my point.
It is no more reasonable to demand that the world accept that
email should not contain rendering information than it would be for some
religious sect to demand that we not "pollute" the walls of our homes
with art.
That's nice, and unrelated to what I wrote. I didn't say that Hotmail
accounts should reject HTML by default but only that Hotmail users
should be able to reject HTML mail. I also didn't say that IE and
Netscape should not be able to generate HTML mail, but only that they
should not generate it by default. Both were intentional.
Our challenge should be to figure out how to give the users
what they want without exposing them to unnecessary risks. If the
problem is a difficult one to solve, it isn't because what the users
want is some that is not "legitimage," rather, it simply means that
we're not being creative enough in defining solutions.
I carefully did not say that all HTML is illegitimate. So why are
you implying that I did? Do you have some vested interest in HTML
mail software? As I said, some HTML mail is legitimate and because
of the size of the Internet, that tiny minority is a lot of messages.
However, that tiny minority of legitimate HTML mail has nothing to do
with the vastly larger bazillions of messages from end users that are
in HTML only because their MUAs use HTML by default.
Then there are the bazillions of spam in HTML.
There is far more use of HTML mail to violate privacy
with such as "web bugs" than legitimate use.
I don't believe this to be true. I get loads of "legitimate"
HTML mail every day. In any case, it doesn't matter. The issue is how to
design a system that works, not how to restrict legitimate users from
accomplishing their goals or seeing "pretty" email messages.
I'm happy you're happy with your legitimate HTML mail. However, I
stand by my claim by pointing to the vast quantity of spam and of
legitimate, (because explicitly solicited) marketing mail that contains
web bugs. How many marketing organizations that have resisted the
sales calls from the mail coverage tracking vendors has not implemented
their own tracking systems?
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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