inline HTML, 1L8N, 16-bit character sets, the death of ASCII predicted

Fri Oct 17 13:43:01 PDT 2003

Quoting richard childers / kg6hac (fscked at pacbell.net):
> Depends on your client and level of sophistication, doesn't it?

Yeah, I find that the ignorant use HTML in mail and the sophisticated
computer folks I deal with don't.

> Rich text isn't going away any time soon. In fact, most clients 
> automatically convert anything that parses as a URL into a clickable 
> entity. Multiple fonts are frequently embedded in messages.

And that's an entry vector for viruses and trojans.

> I personally find it valuable to use bold to highlight certain critical 
> elements of communications to clients, so that there is no misunderstanding.
And that's about the only legit use.

> The majority of the world's users increasingly agree, that this adds 

"the majority"

The "majority" would be using Novell LANs and not be sending intercompany
email were it not for us small minority.  The "majority" use an OS
with *massive* security holes every week, with a User interface that's
inconsistent and awkward.  The "majority" believe that it's ok to have
15 conflicting interaction metaphors to use their computers.  The majority
can't figure out how to effectively use a 3 button mouse.

Let's keep the majority out of it.

> value ... and with 18LN efforts solidly based on 16-bit character sets, 
> the days of plain old ASCII are, I suspect, numbered.

Yup.  Likely to another 30 years.

HTML would be far more acceptable if:
  commercial mail tools didn't "go fetch" images or other things
  that helps spammers and attackers so much.

I'd embrace it if I knew it was ONLY being used for text markup.

As it stands, any message that comes in HTML only is shoved into
a "likely spam" folder.   Of the 500+ of those messages I got in
september, 100% are spam.

The days of HTML mail are, I suspect, numbered.