Re: H.T.M.L. (RE: Getting home directory in Windows 2000 environment)

[Randall R Schulz <rrschulz at cris dot com>]

Chalres,


[ Sorry everyone, I'm feeling peevish. ]


At 18:25 2003-04-10, Chalres "grey wolf" Banas wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Apr 2003 10:15:51 -0700, Randall R Schulz 
> <rrschulz at cris dot com> wrote:
>
> > GARYDJONES,
> > > > and it is widely supported by GUI mail and news clients.
> > >
> > > Does that mean that we should all post in jpegs since we could then 
> > > achieve exactly the same thing?
> >
> > That is a strawman argument and false in its own right.
>
> i personally don't see how.  mail using JPEGs to convey text is the 
> same general effect and idea of using HTML to do the same.  when you 
> throw CSS into the mix, you might as well use JPEGs.  same visual 
> result - you just can't copy and paste.

One is gratuitously excessive. The other is not. And as you admit, 
accessing the content as text requires manual transcription. They do 
not "achieve exactly the same thing."

It is clearly a strawman argument.


> > > > Personal communications must extend beyond
> > > > simple text without stylistic variation for computers to fully
> > > > facilitate human communication.
> > >
> > > Post your proof.
> >
> > Ipso loquitur. People communicate audibly, visually as well as 
> > textually. Arbitrary restriction to styleless text is artificial and 
> > unjustified.
>
> so say you.  i and all of the people i know need no more than text to 
> convey simple thought.  take the smileys for instance. :)

You beg not to be taken seriously. You and everyone you know interacts 
with solely via plain-text email? You and they have no need for any 
form of communication but unstyled text?

Besides, emoticons are for the expressively challenged.


> > > People have been using plain text to communicate quite satisfactorily, thank
> > > you very much.
> > >
> > > >>     c) Attached images add an unnecessary burden on email downloads
> > >
> > > > Burden? On whom?
> > >
> > > On every single person that receives it. That much must be obvious, or are
> > > you being deliberately obtuse?
> >
> > Let me rephrase: _What_ burden? There is no burden.
>
> bandwidth.  CPU power.

What bandwidth? What CPU power? Are you using a 50 MHz 386 with a 
2400-baud modem? Do you saturate you Internet link and your CPU with 
other important traffic and computation that is impeded by the small 
percentage increase in the size of a message with a little styled text?

This is all just nonsense.


> not everyone is on a T1 or DSL.  a lot of people are still on 
> dialup.  a 50-100% increase in message size is a burden to some.  and 
> with JPEG or GIF backgrounds and so forth, that's even more 
> burdensome.  not to mention storage.  i rarely delete messages from this list.

Read my other post. I use a dial-up and I save all my non-spam mail.

The burden argument just doesn't hold.


> or in the case of other people, their inept mail client is incapable 
> of rendering HTML mail for some reason - take AOL 5 and 6 for 
> example.  i've heard they don't parse HTML mail.  and look at Opera 6 
> and 7 (which i use). Opera is designed to not render images in an HTML 
> email.  in fact, there are a lot of HTML emails i get that say simply 
> "This cannot be viewed in plain text." or some similar warning.  on 
> the other hand, Opera parses HTML quite happily, as its mail system is 
> entirely XML-based.  it's a burden for me to receive HTML emails 
> because of the way Opera handles them by default.

Hearsay doesn't count for much.

If the software you're using is deficient, find better. There's good 
stuff that is both free and open source. Software offers no excuse for 
not accommodating rich-format communications.


> as a side note - Opera sends emails in plaintext - by default.  that's 
> one of the reasons i chose Opera as my primary client.  other reasons 
> include M2's nice spam filter feature - i can weed out spam quite 
> easily now.  what little isn't caught by my spam filter comes on the 
> cygwin list.
>
> but i'm digressing from the point.

Which is that you don't like HTML mail so everyone should fall into 
line with your preference, right?


> i don't like seeing fancy text.  bold, pink, 20pt. Times New Roman is 
> incredibly difficult to read and even moreso annoying.  another burden 
> on me.  some people are colorblind - if the sender chooses to send in 
> a color the recipient can't even SEE - don't you think that's a problem?

Another strawman. If Chris enabled HTML postings on this list, do you 
truly think you'd see such a thing? I do not and I don't believe you 
really do, either. Instead of all the lame work-arounds for the lack of 
simply italics, bold and underline, you'd see the real thing and the 
added overheads those embellishments entailed could not even be 
measured, let alone noticed.

People with colorblindness, even complete achromats, still see 
luminosity variations. You're just full of these red herrings, aren't you?


> sure, i miss not being able to bold my text or throw an underline 
> under book titles in my emails.  but i make up for that by making it 
> READ BOLDLY like so, or _emphasizing_ my text in /various/ ways.

So you like these silly limited fall-back forms of markup but not the 
real thing? Ever more ridiculous.


> did i mention smileys? :)

You did. Smileys are for people who cannot communicate well verbally. 
That's no dishonor, since not everyone is trained or practiced in 
effective written communication, but obviously those people are the 
ones that most need extra means to enhance their communication.


> > > > If the poster feels the need to communicate visually,
> > > > then it is their prerogative.
> > >
> > > Just as it would be my perogative to ignore it or bounce it.
> >
> > Yes, you may plug your ears and cover you eyes all you want. No one 
> > loses but you.
>
> ...and the sender.  if you send me an HTML email and i choose to 
> bounce it, then it's also your loss that you didn't get your message 
> through to me.

Let me get this straight. Because someone burdens your Internet link 
and your CPU, you're going to double that burden by bouncing the 
message back to the sender?


> and if you don't make the effort to get past whatever mechanisms i 
> have in place - which i place for a _reason_ - then your mail isn't 
> important to me.  so, no loss.  so YOU'RE the one SOL, not _me_.
>
> :)

I am not at a loss if you ignore things I write. Why would I care? My 
messages to this list are well over 90% answers to questions. Probably 
well over 95%, especially if you ignore this sort of off-topic missive. 
And you, sir, have contributed exactly one answer on this mailing list.

So it's no skin off my nose if you ignore me.


> > > >> Offending software:
> > > >>   AFAIK only MICROSOFT Outlook and  Outlook Express has this enabled by
> > > >> default; SHAME ON YOU M.S!
> > >
> > > > Again, this is BS. I use Eudora for mail and Mozilla (and before it
> > > > Netscape) for news, and they all send HTML mail and images without a
> > > > problem.
> > >
> > > By default?
> >
> > Yes.
>
> ew, that sucks.

And that's offensive language, but so what? I doubt you care and I 
don't care if you don't care.


> > > > Please don't be so atavistic. By definition everyone using Cygwin is
> > > > using an operating system whose GUI subsystem is not optional.
> > >
> > > Whereas html /is/ optional.
> >
> > So are lower-case letters.
>
> as well as many other things.  if i wanted tripe discussions, i would 
> have joined the tripediscussions at yahoo dot com mailing list.

Then why are you contributing your own intestinal expulsions?


> > Randall Schulz
>
> --
> Charles "grey wolf" Banas
> http://the-junkyard.net tech advisor

Advisor, eh? I don't think that's advisable.


Randall Schulz  


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