16 Jun
2000
16 Jun
'00
8:57 p.m.
<html><body><pre>
At 12:34 AM 6/17/00 +0100, Tony wrote:
In any case (relating to my previous comment). I
don't think there's any
problem with people using hand-generated html tags here. I've never seen
that complained about. Just as I've never been flamed for using '\pounds'
to me an UK pound sign, for all '\pounds' is actually a TeX/LaTeX macro.
The problem comes with certain broken mailers that insist on sending a
computer-generated HTML message that's much longer than the text. A
message where every line has font tags, colour tags, etc. Which are
totally useless to people with monochrome text-based displays anyway...
That's the waste of bandwidth.
This is the crux of the discussion that causes it to be irrational. (in the
since of not being reducible to a finite set of parts, not in the sense
that anyone is being crazy)
The issue that you, and others have with HTML is not with HTML at all, it
is with the bad software tools that fail to apply it in a reasonable way.
As you have no doubt noticed, this email is "formatted" with HTML and
should you choose to view it in an HTML aware window it could include
<i>emphasis</i> and <u>underlines</u> that were pretty darn
unobtrusive.
So I agree with you, every HTML capable mailer I've seen to date does a
<b>lousy</b> job of implemneting the technology, but that isn't the
technologies fault.
But I reiterate my main point, using HTML on this list is considered rude,
therefore people should abstain from it if at all possible and apologize
when they accidentially use it (as I did, sorry, I'm trying to make a point)
--Chuck
</pre></body></html>