[WAI] is a hack, but not terrible Re: list management

I agree with Nick that the subject line is valuable space, and should 
be used for a subject. (Of course if I had an intelligent mailer I 
could mark this as a disagreement in the discussion, and people could 
have that presented by their mailer. One of the things I expect from 
the Semantic Web - it has been demonstrated in Amaya and is quite 
cool...)

I also agree with those who suggest configuring the user agent to put 
in the relevant information based on the mail headers. (RFC 822 is a 
very old protocol, and things like extension mechanisms are still 
implemented badly. Sigh).

Which means that while I don't think it would be GREAT, because it is a 
nasty hack to cover the problems of bad clients, it wouldn't upset me 
either. It would be GREAT if mail clients were more helpful - the 
"Mail" program (mail.app) that is built into OS X is the best I have 
seen in this regard, and it isn't all that great. Procmail is very 
powerful, but beyond the average person....

Tina: I apologise  for putting my responses first, but often people 
have read/heard the thread. In accessibility efficiency is incredibly  
important, and I haven't met a mail client that allows you to "skip to 
the interesting bits". So for now I will continue to leave the original 
context until after my message, or to try and put a summary in advance 
with the details interspersed as per "ordinary" mailing list 
conventions. On lists where the majority of people are using assistive 
technologies people complain if you put old stuff first - it takes too 
much time to find the interesting stuff.

cheers

Chaals

On Monday, Jun 23, 2003, at 19:41 Europe/Zurich, Nick Kew wrote:

>
> On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, Liddy Nevile wrote:
>
>>
>> Would others agree with me that it would be a GREAT help if this list
>> always had its name in the subject line - so the subject line read
>> something like: Re: [W3C-WAI-IG] title for the frame  ???
>
> I disagree.  We have computers to automate administrivia like sorting
> incoming email into folders.  Lists that work the way you describe
> waste a large chunk of what could otherwise be a meaningful subject 
> line
> as presented by a mailer.
--
Charles McCathieNevile                          Fundación Sidar
charles@sidar.org                                http://www.sidar.org

Received on Wednesday, 25 June 2003 03:51:01 UTC