Re: Forums

On 2012/01/09 09:10 (GMT-0800) Brad Kemper composed:

> Felix Miata  wrote:

>> On 2012/01/07 10:51 (GMT-0800) Andrew Fedoniuok composed:

>>> It appears that the list is tend to use fixed font formatted messages.
>>> Far not all mail clients are good with that.

>> Non-plain text email message proponents seem to forget that the
>> graphical web we know today did not always exist, and that email
>> predates it by much more than a decade.

> Yes, just as Netscape 1 predates Chrome 35 (or whatever ridiculous number
> they are up to now).

> Most people update their systems and Web browsers at least once every
> decade.

Email wasn't created by most people. those creators had no web browsers when
they developed standards for it, and for many years afterward.

> By your own admission above, those with text-only mail clients have had
> even more time to get with it.

The expensive systems they had to use it may well have been and be proprietary,
and thus opportunity to "update" may never have and may never exist. Similarly
applies for available budgets affecting less expensive and/or less proprietary
equipment. Factors regarding hardware upgrades have small resemblance to the
relative ease and low cost of "upgrading" popular email applications.

> Are we really to believe that active participants in a CSS advancement
> mailing list do not have access to e-mail that can render HTML?

Hardly, but I hardly believe it fair to expect adherents to the original
standards to be excluded from participation in the evolved web in an area
where new ways and old ways overlap rather than meld, while the new ways
attempt to usurp the utility of the old ways. My email app can handle HTML
and CSS, but I keep it disabled 99.97% of the time, because "rich text" email
more often than not gets in the way of legibility. Unfortunately, it doesn't
enable discarding the space wasting formatting from those messages that need
to be archived. The cost of that wasted space rich text senders choose to
impose on me is not appreciated.

> ...As a person trying to communicate through e-mail, I am more concerned
> about my ability to include nuance and readability and context via
> formatting and well placed pictures (and, on this list, of visual examples
> of CSS-formatted HTML). Someone who says they don't care about "accepting
> web pages via SMTP" is really saying they don't care about taking an
> infinitesimal effort to try to understand what I am trying to communicate.
> I have no sympathy for that point of view.

Maybe your nuances, "readability" and pictures are indicative of why people
generally are texting more and emailing less. Here on this system at least,
pictures that aren't big enough (even when zoomed, since zooming can't
produce detail that isn't there to start with) add nothing but noise, and for
a non-zero cost.
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Received on Monday, 9 January 2012 17:57:44 UTC