On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 01:09:12PM +0100, Sam Kuper wrote: > On Thu, Apr 09, 2020 at 09:32:01AM -0500, Derek Martin wrote: > > On Wed, Apr 08, 2020 at 01:17:12PM +0100, Sam Kuper wrote: > >> On Tue, Apr 07, 2020 at 09:23:34PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote: > >>> Sorry, but this is an archaic way of looking at the problem. > >>> People have been doing this for decades now, has become the norm, > >>> common practice, and really it is therefore WE who are being > >>> inconsiderate by not accepting de facto standards that have been > >>> widely adopted for a very long time. > >> > >> I disagree. You have made a "roads were built for cars" argument*: > >> it assumes that today's "de facto standard" trumps historical > >> precedent and considerate behaviour.
And by the way, I ignored this point originally, but doesn't it? Even in the case of cars, which you can argue have had deleterious effects on society (but I think there's plenty of support for the counter-argument), we got to where we got to because it was what most people wanted. Technological evolution is about as democratic as it gets... you vote with your dollars, and the most popular solution wins, regardless of the merits. You can assert that a different solution is better, and your argument might be correct on technical merit, but if most people don't agree your correctness is irrelevant; you still lose. Just ask BetaMax. > >> I've nothing against people sending emails with multiple attachments. > >> But expecting the recipient's MUA to parse multiple attachments into > >> some kind of combined document is presumptuous, because clearly not > >> everyone's MUA does this. > > > > There's a HUUUUUGE difference. Roads existed for millenia before > > cars. > > The timescale isn't the point. My analogy refers only to your argument > that today's "de facto standard" trumps historical precedent and > considerate behaviour. In this respect, the analogy is accurate. If you're talking about historical precedence then time scale very much is the point. If your historical precedent was 5 minutes old that doesn't make for a compelling argument. If your time scale includes a period when something was not in widespread use, and then suddently it was, that too seems pretty uncompelling. But even so, you're basically saying, "It was this way, and so it must always be; no evolution of technology should be permitted." That's asinine. Assembled email documents became a thing basically as soon as technical limitations which prevented it from being practical were overcome. It was a natural, and I think inevitable, evolution of technology that happened pretty quickly, once critical mass was realized. Basically people made e-mail do what they could already do for quite a long time with books and other physical print media: format text with pictures to provide efficient presentation of information with previously well-established conventions, i.e. precedence. Now delivered to your own inbox. > I *disagree* that by the mid 90s, most GUI MUAs could handle this. I may be off by a few years, and it's fairly difficult to collect data about what e-mail clients supported what features when, but I certainly recall getting tons of complaints about it by the time I was in my first sysadmin job where I also had to do desktop support, which was in 1997. It doesn't really matter. The point is by now, the feature has been available in the vast majority of major e-mail clients for a very long time, and is in widespread use. You can rail against technological evolution if you like, but that doesn't help people get work done. All I'm after is to not have to fight with my tools to get them to show me what everyone else around me can see effortlessly. At that particular thing, Mutt sucks quite a lot. I used to be one of the people who argued vehemently against non-plaintext e-mail. But over time, the arguments against it have largely become moot for most people, and the fact is it IS better, because of its ability to more efficiently (in terms of what is visually rendered, not necessarily in how it is encoded) present other kinds of information besides simple unformatted plain text. Me personally, I just want the ability to render italics, to represent emphasis. And to be able to read what my boss sent me... whatever it might be. -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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