Re: [tlug] VT100 Display Capability in Email (Re: Rendering HTMLEmail)

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "bruno" == bruno raoult <bruno@example.com> writes:

    bruno> Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

    >> "De gustibus non disputandum."  As a matter of religion, I do
    >> not argue with people's tastes.  Nobody is saying your father's
    >> preference is wrong; we're saying he should not have to use
    >> HTML to get his needs served, and a world in which people like
    >> him prefer HTML is bad for everybody.

    bruno> You *say* he is wrong.

Show a quote and Message-ID, or retract that.  I just denied it; you
better prove it.  I can't, without reposting the entire thread.

    bruno> I don't understand the "it is bad for everybody" statement.

Anything that makes it harder to write programs to handle email is bad
for everybody.

Of more direct interest to your father, do you think it is an accident
that half the spam I receive is not merely HTML, but deliberately
obfuscated HTML?  Do you think it is an accident that plain text email
worms are an urban myth, while HTML email worms not only work, but the
same old tricks work over and over again?

    bruno> Again, you say that *your* taste is the *right* one... No
    bruno> religion here, but you show yours.

No, I wrote what I do, in what situation, and why I do it that way.
If you call that religion, well, I feel sorry for you.

    >> True, I could use a mailer that allows me to conveniently read
    >> HTML, and even .doc.  That's not the point.

    bruno> It could be, no?

That's right.  "No."

    bruno> We are just speaking about exchanging messages between
    bruno> people.

Precisely.  Now, which part of Sleazy Polluting Asshole Mail don't you
understand?  SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, 80% of which is HTML on the
mailing lists I manage.  Email worms are 100% HTML.  Do you really
think this is an accident?  Do you believe this does not affect
people's ability to exchange messages with each other?

    bruno> And of course, we send generally nice format to these
    bruno> daemons, as we know how the program runs - we made them!
    bruno> ;-)

You obviously have never managed a mailing list, or you'd know that
users are capable of sending anything their MUA can generate to
daemons.

    bruno> Except if another format comes with more possibilities
    bruno> (bold, fonts, colors, etc...).

    >> If I were using the GUI, I could show you what _This_ is a
    >> *very* interesting and informative thread. :-)

    bruno> Nice try. Where "*" is better than "<strong>"?

<strong effect="blinking" size="48pt" color="fire engine red" bg="goldenrod">On a TTY.</strong>

Not to mention that it's awfully hard to hide a credit card number in
an asterisk.  Yes, I once was asked *firmly* by Mastercard to remove
some emails from XEmacs archives because they contained alleged credit
card numbers belonging to Mastercard.  Some of them were visible in
messages, but in other messages they were hidden in the SGML
attributes on formatting tags that normally don't have attributes.
Since HTML viewers ignore those attributes, they're effectively hidden.

    bruno> And again, as I said a few months ago, 300 emails a day in
    bruno> the office make you love top posting (you can trash 90% in
    bruno> seconds).

Huh?  In those cases, simply never inserting the previous message
would be much cleaner.



-- 
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.