- From: David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2001 11:22:12 +0100 (BST)
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> > it is so weird that whilst when I sent the last email, the attachment shows > the cat, yet when recieved the copy it didn't, and if I try toopen the That's because you are confusing proprietory features of your email program with the actual guaranteed behaviour of internet email (a common problem with HTML, of course). You are using Outlook, and in a closed Outlook environment, rich text markup will be preserved and attachments will show up in context and with the icon that you saw when you composed the message (you can use the Windows packager application to add arbitrary icons to attachments when you are operating in a pure Windows/Outlook environment). In an open environment you can only really rely on plain text followed by attachments without any associated icons. When such mail arrives at its destination, a GUI program may re-instate an icon based on the filename extension (or better, the MIME Content Type of the attachment). In order to tunnel across the internet to other closed Outlook domains, various versions of Outlook/Exchange can append either a pseudo-HTML version or a proprietory (MS-TNEF) version as an alternative version of the message. To some extent the pseudo-HTML version will work with non-Microsoft GUI email programs, but it is generally HTML abused for its presentational side effects, so assumes similar presentational behaviour. The fully proprietory version is needed to completely reproduce the local appearance of the message. Both the HTML and fully proprietory versions significantly increase the size of the message. The HTML typically triples it and the MS-TNEF is even worse. Most people on mailing list dislike this because it wastes space in folders, consumes internet bandwidth, and, if they don't have a GUI browser, may well expose them to the raw form of the alternative message. One of the great problems with "user friendliness" in communications applications is that it exposes a false view of the world. Authoring for only Outlook compatibility is quite common because many people fail to realise that Outlook is not the same as email; this is beneficial to Microsoft, as it creates a lock in effect. Using MS-TNEF basically means that you have accepted a closed standards, Microsoft monopoly view of the world.
Received on Sunday, 22 April 2001 06:23:28 UTC