Re: tlug: Mew on (X)Emacs the way to go?

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

>>>>> "jb" == Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com> writes:

    jb> On Mon, 21 Sep 1998, John De Hoog wrote:
    >> Counter-opinion: HTML is bad in mailing lists, etc., but adds
    >> an arguably useful dimension to email updates from Internet
    >> magazines and newspapers, etc., such as those promoted by

You've got to be kidding.  Except for the hotlinks, which have nothing 
to do with HTML (VM and Gnus both provide hotlinks to all email
addresses and urls in your buffer on the basis of regexps), it's pure
bandwidth waste.  What they should be doing is sending the mail as
MIME external bodies so you can click on it and open your browser.

If you want a "push" service, subscribe to one using your browser;
email is a different kind of medium.  I get far too much of it too
want to deal with HTMLized email.

    >> Linux-friendly Netscape in their In-box service. An increasing
    >> number of email clients in the non-Unix part of the world
    >> support viewing of such html mail right in the normal message
    >> viewer window, which means it's one more thing people drifting
    >> over from that part of the world expect to duplicate in Unix.

So they use Netscape.  Fine.  The only disadvantage is that Netscape
is a read-only MUA (which I consider to be a plus YOW!), and even for
reading, you want to keep your emails under 20 per day.  On a typical
day, I receive more like 500 emails (thanks to procmail, most of them
end up in the debian-devel folder and I never see them ;-).

    jb> I still think it's evil and should be exterminated.  Even if

Hear, hear!

    jb> we ignore the fact that some people use mail clients that
    jb> don't read HTML (I do, and I consider Pine's inability in that
    jb> area to be a feature, not a bug) and others who hate HTML
    jb> e-mail turn off that ability, HTML e-mail wastes a lot of
    jb> bandwidth with background wallpaper (why do people usually
    jb> choose the most sickening wallpaper possible for their
    jb> e-mail?) and with unncessary formatting.

I don't know any people who choose sickening wall-paper.  But then, my 
definition of people doesn't include HTML emailers ;-)

I don't care about the unnecessary formatting, it's the necessary
formatting (like breaking lines before they reach 1kB) that gets
omitted that drives me to the *plonk* button.

    jb> HTML e-mail also causes a problem for mailing lists, since an
    jb> HTML mail sent to majordomo gets regurgitated into the list
    jb> with all its tags as plain text, since a lot of people have
    jb> their software set to send HTML mail be default.

Majordomo sucks.  But what do you expect from a Perl script, after
all?

    jb> The only HTML-like behavior I consider acceptable in e-mail is
    jb> hot URLs and hot e-mail addresses.  Everything else is an
    jb> annoyance.

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