Re: appropriate formats for email lists

[Alex Lancaster]

(Please send follow-ups by private e-mail.)

>>>>> "GR" == glen e p ropella <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

>> While I'm in rant mode ;-) the above comments all apply to folks
>> who send mail in HTML format.  Please leave the HTML for those
>> webpages.

GR> Now that's just plain wrong, Alex.  [grin] HTML isn't
GR> significantly *larger* than ASCII.  It's not hard for unix users
GR> to read (Netscape, Arena, Mozilla, lynx, emacs, etc).  I suppose
GR> #3 has some validity; but, realistically, the unix mail clients
GR> should catch up to the mac and pc clients in their ability to
GR> parse marked up code.  But, it's not *that* valid of an objection
GR> since Netscape's mail client can do it.  And I'm sure emacs can be
GR> configured to parse it.

Emacs (actually Gnus, which is what I use) can parse it and it does.
I can read HTML formatted mail, it's just a hassle.  Either it reads
it natively (if it's MIME/HTML encoded correctly), or you have to save
it a separate file, fire up a browser and read it, which, if you have
a lot of them, seriously interrupts your work-flow.

Whilst, in general, I agree that the Unix world could catch-up with
parsing of marked up e-mail, that mail should be marked up according
to W3C *standards*, and not encoded in bastardized forms of HTML in
which companies like MS flagrantly abuse the standards, so as to make
it so inconvenient to read regular e-mail in any e-mail client other
than Outlook Express.

Many e-mail clients (I'm thinking largely of ones in the MS world like
Outlook) often butcher the HTML encoding and MIME encoding so much
that:

1) even if the HTML version isn't significantly larger (it always adds
   a bit), oftentimes the mailing agent that sent the mail so
   blatantly ignores the RFCs and MIME encoding standards and mangles
   the mail that the HTML ends up being unparsable (except by
   aforesaid MS mail clients) and ends up looking like garbage,
   especially to the list-archiver (look back through some of the
   swarm-support archive at some of the messages and you'll see what I
   mean);

2) e-mail clients (Microsoft Outlook is the worst offender) will, by
   default, encode this in a multipart alternative format, which
   whilst at least providing a text alternative, ends up being
   significantly bloated.  Once a friend sent me a one-line e-mail to
   the effect of `got your message, call me' which took up the
   equivalent of 28 lines in terms of space.  Since we archive all the
   swarm-modelling lists, even a 2:1 bloat over what's necessary adds
   up!

GR> So, while Word is not really appropriate, html is.  That said, I
GR> much prefer ascii as well.

Agreed, HTML is a less-worse offender than Word, but it's still an
offender.

The bottom line is that you don't really need to use HTML encoded mail
to get your message across in a technical forum like the Swarm mailing
lists.  

Since all the messages to the lists are 1) archived, and hence take up
space; 2) sent to a large number of folks who have varying Internet
connection speeds and connect costs (remember outside the U.S. folks
pay by the minute or the second for a regular dial-up connection!) and
hard disk capacities; 3) read by users running everything from NT and
BeOS to FreeBSD; the right thing to do is send your mail in a format
that is understood by as many mail readers as possible: ASCII (or
Unicode as noted by Christopher Landauer).

Alex
-- 
Alex Lancaster * address@hidden * www.santafe.edu/~alex * 505 984-8800 x242
Santa Fe Institute (www.santafe.edu) & Swarm Development Group (www.swarm.org)


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