[Gllug] Where has the modem gone

[David Damerell]

On , 21 Nov 2001, Alex Hudson wrote:
>On Wed, 2001-11-21 at 14:15, David Damerell wrote:
>>>aren't so bad; but even moderately complex business email would be
>>>useless in non-html format.
>>That's just not true; I work for a very large corporate, and only the
>>marketing and PR weasels feel the need to generate HTML email.
>Not really. I use tables, bullet points and colouring extremely
>regularly, but I suppose it depends who you work for and what work you
>do.

I'm not saying that you _don't_; just that it's not true to say that
it would be useless without.
 
>>If there was some way to get some minimal logical markup into email
>>instead of plain text, I'd be keen on it myself; but, sadly, HTML
>>isn't it.
>Again, it must depend on who you work with. Email is extremely good as a
>fast communication medium - most of my emails are written within five
>minutes

Um. I find it hard to think of much, short of tables, that something
requiring only 5 minutes to write would benefit from.

>The key uses I have for HTML email are quoting, tables, identation,
>linking, etc., all of which have text parallels that are readable but
>completely unusable - uncopyable, or unreplyable, etc.

Tables I'll grant you; but quoting, indentation and linking? Clearly
we can quote in plain-text email; if I wanted to indent I could; and
if I want a link, I'll type the URL into the plain text - if you have
a nice client, that'll be just as useful to you.

>Being able to
>colour is important - I can get sent drafts, make amendments, highlight
>them, etc., and send it back. 

There are conventions for indicating amendments in plain text -
awkward, but without the 'angry fruit salad' effect on the results.

If your correspondents are technically minded - which, sadly, they
probably aren't - it's most useful to send a diff in any case.

>Being able to cut-and-paste sensibly with a wordprocessor is also
>extremely important, and again, I can't do that with text.

Why not?

>Then, there's
>also things you can't do with text, such as italicising,
>right-justifying, etc...

Overkill for these quick 5-minute emails, surely.

[Besides, plain text has _conventions_ for *emphasis* too.]

-- 
David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?

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