"CBFalconer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Mike Schilling wrote: >> "Mike Meyer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message >>> "Mike Schilling" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>>> "l v" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message >>>>> Xah Lee wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> (circa 1996), and email should be text only (anti-MIME, circa 1995), >>>>> >>>>> I think e-mail should be text only. I have both my email and >>>>> news readers set to display in plain text only. It prevents >>>>> the marketeers and spammers from obtaining feedback that my >>>>> email address is valid. A surprising amount of information >>>>> can be obtained from your computer by allowing HTML and all >>>>> of it's baggage when executing on your computer. Phishing >>>>> comes to my mind first and it works because people click the >>>>> link without looking to see where the link really takes them. >>>> >>>> A formatting-only subset of HTML would be useful for both e-mail >>>> and Usenet posts. >>> >>> Used to be people who wanted to send formatted text via email >>> would use rich text. It never really caught on. But given that >>> most of the people sending around formatted text are using >>> point-n-click GUIs to create the stuff, the main advantage of >>> HTML - that it's easy to write by hand - isn't needed. >> >> But the other advantage, that it's an existing and popular >> standard, remains. > > However, for both e-mail and news, it is totally useless.
Useless except in that it can describe formatting, which is what it would be used for? ( > It also > interferes with the use of AsciiArt, Except that it can specify the use of a fixed-width font, which makes Ascii Art work. It can also distinguish between text that can be reformatted for flow and text than can not. So I think you meant to say that it *enables* Ascii Art. > while opening the recipient to > the dangers above. Which is why a formatting-only subset, which doesn't cause any such dangers, is required. As I said above. Another advantage is that evewry internet-enabled computer today already comes with an HTML renderer (AKA browser), so that a message saved to a file can be read very easily. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
