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

["Perry E. Metzger" <perry@imsi.com>]

Timothy C. May says:
> I see two "stable attractors" for text/graphics/multimedia/etc. sent
> over the Net:
> 
> 1. Straight text, ASCII, 80 column format. All systems can handle
> this, all mailers and newsreaders can handle it, it's what the Usenet
> is essentially based upon, and it gets the job done.

Sorry, Tim, but this isn't true. I know people who still own VIC-20s
that can't handle 80 columns. Also, users of ASR-33 teletypes might be
left out by the requirement to handle full ASCII. I was using an
ASR-33 full time only 15 years ago.

Now, I know that all usenet postings in Japan these days use ISO-2022
encoded characters, and MIME and all that, and that people in Russia
use similar methods to carry their stuff, but they are just
bounders. I say its back to 38 columns and upper-case only Baudot in
order to meet the lowest common denominator.

> 2. The Web, for graphics, images, etc. This will be the next main
> stable attractor, deployed on many platforms. (I'm assuming the debate
> here about Netscape standards does not imply much of a fragmentation,
> that Mosaic, Netscape, MacWeb, etc., will all basically be able to
> display Web pages in much the same way.)

And of course there are no MIME standards; its physically impossible
to deploy MIME on two different platforms identically. Why, the
specifications are all written in english, and we know no engineers
can read! I can see why you would reject MIME so vehemently.

> The issue is not unwillingness to use new technology, it is, rather,
> the issue of "stable attractors."

I see.

> 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....

Lets get down to serious issues for a moment.

Because you've got a shitty MIME reader, you've concluded that the
technology is bad. Thats all it comes down to.

MIME allows fully multimedia in the style of the Web, you know. You
can't say that the Web is good and consistantly call MIME bad. If you
want to see what a difference implementation makes, try using a
text-based Web browser for a few hours and then compare it to Netscape.

If you'd ever used NeXTMail, you'd understand why MIME is a good
thing. Just because you are using a kludgy reader doesn't mean MIME is
kludgy.

Perry