Gordon Peterson wrote:
I think you ought to let the READER be the judge of
what the READER finds the most readable... based on
THEIR screen, THEIR vision, THEIR color preferences,
THEIR screen resolution, etc etc.
Argh... I first had this debate over 20 years ago... It is one
of the classic issues in email... I really don't want to drag through
all the detail which would involve endless quotes from Aristotle on the
subject of rhetoric, etc... However, in "classic" communication systems,
the *speaker* is responsible for constructing communications in a form
which is most likely to be understood by his audience. Electronic
communications adds a twist to things, very different from traditional
forms of communications, in that the reader is able to reformat the
"utterance" upon receipt. Nonetheless, the speaker still has
responsibility to do the best he can in forming his utterances...
There is a long set of arguments that would say that properly
formatted HTML would be the best form in which to construct a message
since the recipient of the message can alter the presentation to adjust
to his own preferences. Thus, a message should be formatted with "<em>"
tags (not "<b>" tags) and the reader will choose how he prefers to see
emphasis rendered in response to the speakers indication that emphasis
be shown. If all messages are sent in ASCII, then the reader has less
control over the message content than if messages are sent in HTML. It
should not be forgotten that the reader has the option, given
appropriate software, to take an HTML message and have it formatted as
pure ASCII... Lynx based HTML browsers have been doing that for a very
long time...
I think the real issue here is not the sending of HTML, but
rather, the fact that most reader's email systems can't be trusted to
display HTML without risks. We wouldn't be hearing these objections if
more readers had systems that had the flexibility of web bugs, were
better protected against HTML born viruses, etc. It isn't HTML that is
the problem, it is the software that reads it.
bob wyman
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