Re: [Asrg] Introduction and another idea

> From: Kee Hinckley <nazgul@somewhere.com>

> >So by your count, 25/144 or 17% involved real HTML?
> >That's more than I predicted, but less than it seemed others suggested.
>
> I would guess that's not unusual for a non-technhical mailing list. 
> I suspect person-to-person (letters from your Mom, that sort of 
> things) will have a higher HTML ratio, but we'll see.

We're talking about real HTML, not HTML that is present only
because Netscape and Outlook generate HTML by default.  Perhaps your
Mom is different from most people who use computers only casually.
Most people are less likely to use text formatting than the apparently
fairly computer savvy contributors to that mailing list.

Someone mentioned something about an "apple-B" key apparently in
connection to making a word bold.  That is meaningless to the
majority of users who have PCs instead of MACs.  For several reasons,
I wouldn't be surprised if MAC users are more likely than average
to use real HTML formatting.

I'm irked at the demands to squelch this topic.  This topic has at
least as much hope of having some useful result as the zillions of
words spent on "CR" and "CRI."  It makes no sense to talk about
filtering HTML by default for the immediately foreseeable future, but
BCPs on aspects of spam, virus, worms, or privacy could quite properly
and valuably urge that HTML be used only when really required or
explicitly requested.  The current practice of bloating mail by 10X
encoding with a text/plain version and a visibly identical text/html
version is nasty, bad, and incompetent.

Vernon Schryver    vjs@rhyolite.com

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