Re: Forums

2012/1/9 Matthew Wilcox <elvendil@gmail.com>:
>> I think this is backwards;  if someone sends styled text, such that the style conveys something useful (else why bother?) those reading in plain text lose something.  That's the only one of the four cases with semantic loss.
>>
>> You are at liberty to style up my messages as much as you like… :-)
>
> I think that's backwards. Because someone can optionally choose to strip mark-up (and therefore semantics) the entire group should be forced not to be able to add such semantics in the first place? Force everything to the lowest possible common denominator?

Personally (that’s a very big “personally”) I don’t think it’s
backwards. Formatted email just doesn’t feel like email, but I also
understand that

1. Fixed width probably doesn’t make sense any more (think Arabic)
(Actually because of Unicode screw-ups it probably doesn’t make sense
for Chinese any more either)

2. Fixed width support in GUI clients generally suck. Just look at how
badly Gmail handles fixed width. It’s a complete disaster and I can
imagine why people will regard fixed-width as archaic and wrong if
*all* the email clients they have ever seen treat it like garbage.

-- 
cheers,
-ambrose

Received on Monday, 9 January 2012 22:25:12 UTC