[Gllug] Email Formats

[Nix]

On Wed, 21 Nov 2001, David Damerell stipulated:
> On Wednesday, 21 Nov 2001, Jackson, Harry wrote:
>>About four colours.
>>Background highlighting but only shades of grey
>>Underline
> 
> The trouble with all this is it's physical markup, which is exactly
> wrong - all else aside, what's a shade of grey on a screen reader?

I'm forced to use Outlook at work, which provides roughly this subset
(or at least, it's this subset which people *use*).

It's appalling. Setting background colours or foreground colours is all
very well, but people never do both at once; so I, with my black
background, are faced with your[1] email, with some of your text
coloured `Black' and others coloured `Auto', and half your email's
disappeared, because you're too stupid to have realised that not
everyone uses your exact colour scheme.

And then there's the people who adjust only the background colour; yes,
emails in white on glaring cream are *so* easy to read. Especially when
they're presented in 2 point Courier.


Users are not typographers; any user seen in proximity to a font family
or markup scheme should be shot for our own protection.


[1] generic Outlook-luser `your'

> What you need is logical markup for emphasis and marking sections, but
> to leave the physical representation up to the reader - like how HTML
> was meant to work.

Exactly so. (And dump the programs that generate insane HTML with the
markup outnumbering the content by 400:1.)

>>Tables  
> 
> No bad idea, if we can suppress the tendency for people to use tables
> for things that aren't tables.

... which is probably impossible :(

>>Ladies
> 
> Not very useful in mail, I think.

The people I'm currently living with I met when the lady of the house
flamed me in email :) does that count?

-- 
`Many people have tried whispering in his ear, and indeed bellowing
 with megaphones but up to now he's seemed to be completely
 clue-immune.' --- John Winters

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