On Sat, May 06, 2000 at 12:48:12AM +0200 or thereabouts, Roberto Suarez Soto wrote:
> I've thought a lot of times about the html-email thing. And I've come
> to a conclusion, but as I don't know very much about all this email and
> internet world, I put it here to see what you think :-) (yes, yes, it's
> related to Mutt ... well, sort of O:-))
>
> I think that html email will become the standart. I've got only two
> reasons to think this:
>
> - The most used MUAs (Windows based) use by default html to compose
> emails. They're also full of bugs, as we're seeing nowadays, but
> anyway there's a lot of people using them.
Lots of people connect to the net without a firewall, too :)
> - If Internet access and speed become greater everyday, and the html
> tags don't cause too much performance loss (in terms of net traffic,
> I mean) ... why not? I mean, what are the reasons that make html (or
> maybe xml or a derivated thing) not suited for email?
Going by the HTML contents of the occasional HTML email I get, the HTML
is rubbish, you get thirty pages of HTML source for a two-line message
of text, and you have to have a browser or something that will turn it
into something you can read. Also, grepping the mail spool for things
quickly will suddenly require lots of extra stuff to filter out things
in angle brackets. (Okay, this is perhaps not a terribly universal
problem...)
> This is related to Mutt because maybe in a near future we see html
> emails as the norm, and not the exception, and some kind of html rendering
> engine gets implemented into Mutt.
>
> What's your opinion related to this?
> a) "You'll get html email support when hell freezes over."
> b) "I don't care. I'll decide it when it happens."
> c) "You're too much on Prozac. Stop it."
a), c), or: d) Depends entirely on the developers who actually do
the work.
I don't like the idea. I like one small simple (ha) program that
does email, another small program that does the HTML stuff, another
program that's the editor, another program that sorts the printing
out, and being able to use one from the other and pipe the results
through something else, should I care to.
But then, I don't contribute to mutt development, so my opinion and
wants are not really likely to have an effect. :)
Telsa
