[Gllug] Email Formats

[Bruce Richardson]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2001 at 05:48:48PM +0000, Stephen Harker wrote:
> I don't wish to be rude, but its just this sort of circular rambling 
> that has put companies like Microsoft so far ahead of everyone else. 

Having a cast-iron monopoly put them so far ahead of everyone else, even
if circular rambling doesn't help catch up.  They made their first
billion from DOS, remember?

> You have a choice. Live with your choices. If you choose to use a 
> console email client and gripe about all the html then that is YOUR 
> choice. The other 98% of email users are using e-mail clients that 
> render html email in a readable way and that is their choice. 

In fact they are using clients which generate html by default without
indicating to the user that this is happening or that there is an
alternative.  They produce e-mails which frequently break the simple
open standards that e-mail is based on (winmail.dat, anyone?), are more
error-prone than most other clients and less error-tolerant, with the
laughable result that they actually cause more problems for eachother
than for those of us using standards-based systems (which tend to be
strict about what they send but tolerant about what they receive).

I personally have no problems reading the html and rtf e-mails generated
by these systems, Mutt copes fine.  But the problems that it causes for
our staff - and the problems some of them inadvertently cause for others
- make this more than a petty peeve.  

Microsoft et al are happy to produce e-mail clients that make it easy to
embed a stupidly large background image in an e-mail (and provide
templates that encourage them to do this) but don't feel the need to
provide any hint to the user of the size of the resultimg message or the
problems this may cause at the other end.  They are happy to create
document formats which execute destructive code automatically and
wizards that step users through creating 2-page 2-megabyte documents
stuffed with ridiculous bit-maps from their clip gallery but don't feel
the need to add a mechanism (on by default) which will check the size of
an e-mail before sending it and pop up with a message saying "This
message is 10mb big and may cause problems for the recipient, are you
sure you want to send it?  Here is a page of tips on how to reduce the
size of a file."

Microsoft have, over time, produced some decent products but also many
which represent grossly stupid and inappropriate uses of technology.
Interfaces which bury useful features and encourage the creation of
poorly-edited information, file formats which self-destruct with use - I
could go on but I'd only depress myself.  They get away with it because
a) they have that crushing monopoly and b) the series of explosive PC
revolutions that have occurred since the early 80s mean that the ratio
of informed and skilled computing staff to PC installations is tiny.
Others have to compete not only against their money and their entrenched
position but the "received wisdom" that theirs is the only way.

Up to a point, the more restrictive, unreliable and inefficient their
software is the better it is for them (and this doesn't just apply to
Microsoft).  It means that more PCs are bought and more clueless NT
"administrators" employed.  It makes the underqualified staff who
support so many computing systems (often just the people who learned to
point-and-click a little faster than the others) all the more dependent
and means they never have the breathing space to pause and look around.

> Majority rules. 

The majority of our staff were considerably more productive using
WordStar on DOS than they are using Word (no matter how much we try to
train them, its clumsy interface and stupid document formatting system
will defeat us).  Most of that same majority would not want to go back,
so adept are MS at marketing shiny new "features" which often useless
but look good in theory.  Most of them would even rebel if provided with
a more sane GUI editing tool, they are too set in the bad habits which
mean they take twice as long to create their documents (which often end
up in a state where the user dare not edit them any more in case they
implode).

As with many other harried IT staff, I might have time to remedy some of
this if MS weren't constantly pulling the rug out from under, enforcing
upgrades by introducing incompatibilities, with each "upgrade" removing
features and changing default settings seemingly at random.

Free software on the server side saves a lot of my time and sanity.  I'd
love to use it to introduce some sanity to the user side but that killer
ratio I mentioned operates in our IT department as well - i.e. most of
my colleagues have their eyes shut and their mouths firmly clamped on
what they think is Microsoft's teat.

So the majority does rule but it's nothing to admire or emulate.

None of which means that html e-mail (wandering belatedly back on topic)
is evil.  But don't tell me that MS got ahead by providing great
features in great software, cause they didn't.

-- 
Bruce

Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a
Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web...
		-- Tim Berners-Lee
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