Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 7 Nov 1998 09:59:25 -0500 (EST) | From | "Mike A. Harris" <> | Subject | Re: Comments on Microsoft Open Source document |
| |
On Fri, 6 Nov 1998, Thomas Molina wrote:
>The idjits just don't think. Our organization's three year computer >upgrade was at the same time MS 98/Office 97 came out. People who got >the new computers started sending out documents in the new format which, >in the beginning, only a tiny percentage could read. So, not only were >the lusers idjits, the admins were also lusers.
Thus the importance of standards. ASCII text is ASCII text. A message sent now will be readable 100 years from now, and a message sent 100 years from now as ASCII text will be readable 100 years ago (in terms of then). ASCII doesn't have version numbers, and email is strictly defined in RFC's. Attachments are not email, they are attachments.
Therefore an email only containing attachments does not contain any email at all, just file attachments. Without valid ASCII text in the message, as far as I'm concerned it is not email. If I have an application that can look at an attachment, I may or may not go through the trouble of viewing it. GIF/JPG's purposefully sent to me with specific intent for me to look at, such as jokes from friends, etc... are welcome and I'll save and view with zgv/xv. GIF/JPG attached to email in mailing lists is violation of netiquette IMHO unless it fits the particular list. Likewise are other formats such as HTML, and other attachments. I regularly delete HTML, Wordperfect, Word, etc documents sent out, because it is obvious to me that the people sending them are not sending me a webpage/wordperfect doc or word doc, but are rather sending me an EMAIL MESSAGE stupidly written in one of those formats.
The only HTML/WP/WORD attachments that I will in fact save, are ones sent as attachments to an ASCII text message telling me what the attachment is, and why it was sent. So for example, someone sending me a Resume in WP format and telling me so in the mail it is attached to - would be considered acceptible. Someone writing me an email message in WP is not acceptible. Email is not Wordperfect/WOrd/HTML, it is ASCII. Programs that send email as non-ASCII, are non-standard, and such mail goes unread to /dev/null, and always will do so, unless PINE gets a built in WP or HTML viewer anytime soon.
-- Mike A. Harris - Computer Consultant - Linux advocate
Linux software galore: http://freshmeat.net
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |