> I disagree. If everyone used HTML mail just for things like screenshots > or where an image was essential, then maybe it would be workable. > However, most people use HTML mail to create a fancy border or > background, or to hideously misuse fonts, in most cases communicating > nothing useful and wasting bandwidth.
People have been wasting bandwidth for years now, and message format seems to have nothing to do with it. It used to be that the favorite people to bash were those with the extremely long signature lines (in text mail). The percentage of wasted bandwidth on silly stuff (jokes, etc) is huge. The number of attached MPG, AVI, GIF, JPEG, and silly Powerpoint presentations I've received is considerable, and I suspect greatly exceeds the extra few bytes per message that I get with HTML encoding. Does this mean that we should dictate format - no. If you don't like the way people use fonts or backgrounds, this is another issue. > Also, when you decide to render HTML in your mail client, then does that > also mean you should pick up all the baggage associated such as > javascript/ecmascript, java applets, activex controls, shockwave/flash > plugins, etc.? E-mail should never be executable in my opinion. No Not necessarily. There is nothing that says you can't turn this off in your client. And in fact it is a very good idea to do so. > execptions. Otherwise, you've created a security nightmare and you get > things like Bugbear, Klez, Melissa, and the world of > Microsoft-accelerated viruses and worms. Yup - this is true, and what a lot of the non-UNIX world is dealing with. Even the Unix side is getting close to having to deal with this, as we're seenig in other areas (ref: Apache - it's a matter of market penetration, and Linux is gaining ground). But simply turning back the clock in terms of progress on the email content side is not an option for most. The Unix community seems to be one of the last holdouts in this area - but it's a battle IMHO that cannot be won. This resembles the old UNIX days when GUI's were just becoming fashionable - there were a LOT of holdouts claiming that character /ascii based CLI's were the only way to go (I was one of them but have learned my lessons here). This way of thinking is pretty much dead. It will also in time be a non-issue for the email content side as well. Best Regards, -- Tim -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
