I'm sorry but as OT as this thread is (haven't read all of it) I have to get my 2 cents in here. Response inlined below...
* On Sun May-08-2005 at 08:44:08 PM +0000, Calvin Spealman said: [...] > I'm tired of everyone being so blatently rude in their defensive > stances over simple suggestions of improvement. Clearly 'improvement' is subjective. Hence the differing opinions. > For some reason, I've noticed these actions move prevalently in > regards to email protocols and formats. The W3C wants to release a new > version of HTML? No one complains (mostly). Someone wants to create a > new e-mail standard, or expand an existing one? Off with their heads! I have to disagree here. If you read RFC 822[1] (1982) and then take a look at RFC 2822[2] (2001) then you'll see that there have been changes and updates to the e-mail standard. If you care to create a new one then go ahead and do it. If people like it then they will start to use it. It's as simple as that. Perhaps instead of trying to extend a standard that was created to send text around you should be trying to form a new standard altogether; I'm not really sure what you're trying to push for here. Apparently the ability to attach any file you wish to an e-mail is good enough for most people and this really is a non-issue. If you care to have fancy formatting or whatever else then attach a document in any format you like and if people want to read it they will. If someone's e-mail client displays certain attached files inline with the message than that's fine with me. In certain cases I think this even makes a lot of sense (e.g. images). I just don't see why this isn't good enough to get your fancy formatting. Outlook does this with HTML and we all know what a horrible mess that has created, but I think if you're really keen on this and adapt a mail client to automatically display certain types of attachments (without being a huge security risk!) then people may adopt it; but that is all speculation. To cut to the point all I'm trying to say is that e-mail has the capability to do what you want, you just need to figure out an appropriate file format for this purpose and then push to get clients to automatically display these files. If the majority like it then it will be used. > Going by the way everyone reacts to these ideas, one would come to the > conclusion that we should all still run nothing but command lines and > pass our information around on FTP and Gopher servers. <troll> Transferring files using the File Transfer Protocol -- silly us! </troll> Sorry for that, but it's hard to take that last sentence seriously seeing as it's a patently false conclusion. I'm running X right now with loads of cool GUI apps and (for one example) I use the WWW to share all sorts of information, so I don't know what you're worrying about. [1] http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html [2] http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html * Alternatively, you can also get these files in plain ASCII text from an FTP server at... never mind. </more trolling> -- Sami Samhuri
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