[geeks] mail formatting (was Re: HD/IDE question)

[Mike Meredith]

On Sun, 8 Oct 2006 12:18:23 -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> > Nobody has used the defacto standards to render email text in an
> > enhanced way (as far as I know) but there's no reason why it cannot
> > be done. Making words *bold* and _emphasising_ them has been
> > 'standard' for years, and emoticons aren't much younger. What else
> > is really *needed* ?
> 
> That's not a codified standard, 

I know ... it's why I used the word "defacto". No reason why it couldn't
be sensibly extended and made a codified standard.

> and it does nothing for layout and
> things like that.

If you spent more time thinking how it could work and less time thinking
of reasons why it can't you might realise there are plenty of ways
layout can (and are) expressed in plain text (think Wikis).

And to some extent you really don't want too much in the way of layout
anyway. The way something is rendered should remain under the control of
the recipient ... you might be reading this on a huge high-resolution
display, I might be using a mobile phone, someone else could be using a
braille terminal.

> People want to send postcards and "chart junk" to each other.

Not too many people use window managers that let them turn the email
window over. Don't MIME parts take care of extra content ? The only
remaining bit is to optionally include those parts as part of the text
body, and something like :-

[image "attachmentname" here]

would deal with that.

> I want a standard that at least let's me still see the message, which
> the current use of HTML does not allow.

Over the years I've seen quite a few attempts at right text email land
in my inbox (Postmasters tend to gets lots and lots of wacky emails) and
none of them worked too well when viewed in an MUA that didn't implement
the new 'standard'.

A standard for enhanced rendering of text/plain would mean that emails
remain perfectly readable using 'less'.

> > text/with-all-the-knobbly-bits-that-only-works-in-my-mua.
> 
> No one suggested introducing anything that only works in one mua.
> 
> What I suggested was the exact opposite: a standard that all of them
> use.

Nobody who introduces a rich text standard for email wants it to be
something that fails and is only implemented in one MUA. History tells
us that's the destiny for such standards however.

> What's going to happen if things stay as they are, is we'll see most
> email go to HTML formatted madness, and even more crap than we have
> to deal with now.

We'll probably have to deal with that anyway. Unless you can convince
Microsoft to give up text/html and start using something else.

-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
  A: Because top quoting results in an unnatural ordering of text.
  Q: Why is top quoting (adding your reply at the top) bad ?