Re: McCoy is Right! New Mail Format to Start Now.

[jalicqui@prairienet.org (Jeff Licquia)]

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Don't freak with the address... I'm moving.  Check the sig if you're paranoid.

Tim's wise words were:

>The issue is not unwillingness to use new technology, it is, rather,
>the issue of "stable attractors." That is, what can I/we reasonably
>expect others to also have. Clearly if I issued my paper to the list
>in FrameMaker format, or Acrobat format, or even TeX format, only a
>few people would be able to read it. Fewer still would actually take
>the steps needed to actually display the paper.
>
>Standards, standards, standards!
>
>I don't think the minor extensions to e-mail (loosely called "MIME,"
>though MIME serves other functions besides attaching graphics) are
>worth the effort, frankly. Most of the MIME messages (the ones that
>tell me about "ISO 558972 fonts" and "Press any key to return") don't
>seem to warrant the effort....I think in 90%+ of the cases people
>simply send messages as MIME by default, not becuase non-ASCII stuff
>is included.

Well, ignoring the fact that MIME appears to be infiltrating the Web as well...

I would differ with your analysis of MIME's lack of usefulness.  It does
provide a possible way to integrate PGP into the mail/Web landscape (from a
crypto standpoint).  Multimedia I'm not so sure about; I think the big draw
to MIME will come when Person A drags and drops a spreadsheet into a MIME
mailer and sends the message to Person B, who then clicks on an icon to pull
up the spreadsheet.  But I digress...

I'd say, however, that MIME isn't a done deal yet, though it's getting
there.  Until it's there, it's probably a bad idea.  It's been my experience
that many mailers are just MIME-compliant enough to cause their users lots
of headaches.

(As I write this, I notice I'm using Eudora, which MIMEs all its stuff.  Oh,
well; I hope this message isn't too much trouble for y'all...)

>If we make the leap, I say make the leap to the Web:
>
>cave drawings --> text --> e-mail --> Web
>
>(By Web I of course mean the whole ball of wax involving HTML/HTTP/etc.)
>
>This is not a rejection of new technology, just a wise selection of
>which technology to bet on.

I vote for MIME-encoded cave drawings. :-)

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