On 02 Apr 1998 17:49:42 -0500, Rich Pieri
<rich.pieri@prescienttech.com> wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>>>>>> "WM" == Wayne McGuire <wmcguire@cybercom.net> writes:
>
>WM> These are just a few of the companies and products that are strongly
>WM> committed to the future of HTML/XML mail and messaging: ABC, AOL, CNN,
>WM> Eudora, IBM, InfoBeat, Lotus Notes, Microsoft, Netscape, The New York
>WM> Times, Pegasus, Red Herring and ZDNet.
>
>And which of these companies have any experience drafting open standards?
>Microsoft? "Microsoft Mail: as far from RFC 821 & RFC 822 as you can get
>and still pretend to care." Lotus? Unlike Microsoft, Lotus has never
>bothered pretending to care, their network software is so badly broken.
>The only one I see is Netscape, and that is only because they have recently
>decided that yes, proprietary Internet standards are a bad idea. The rest
>of them are publishers of one sort or another, not what anyone with a clue
>would consider high credentials for drafting standards.
MIT's World Wide Consortium http:www.w3.org is in
charge of developing standards for HTML and XML.
Perhaps you could address any disagreements you
have about the standards process with Tim
Berners-Lee or Tim Bray.
The main point stands that Microsoft, Netscape,
Lotus, Eudora and Pegasus -- which collectively
control a huge segment of the mail reading market
-- are strongly committed to promoting
HTML/XML-based mail. Their influence on the
computing world is likely to be much greater than
the traditional plain text Unix community.
>It is the Allmighty Bullet Chart driving this "strong commitment to the
>future of HTML/XML mail messaging".
What is driving it is the belief that the ability
to handle HTML and XML documents through the mail
reader could be valuable.
>Nobody wants to have a product with
>fewer bullets than everyone else. The clueless goofs, the same lusers
>putting zillions of dollars into Bill Gates' pockets, do not know that a
>bullet on a review chart shows *NOTHING* about how well the program does
>what it is supposed to do.
>The sad thing is that they do not want to learn better. They believe they
>are happy remaining blissfully stupid. All those companies you list know
>it, so they continue to foster that belief, because it keeps them in
>business.
Attacking all the above companies and
organizations as being controlled by "clueless
goofs" and "lusers," as being "blissfully stupid,"
etc. is probably going to do little to stop the
HTML/XML juggernaut in mail reading technology.
Anyone who wants to discuss these issues in depth
can subscribe to Boston Online at
http://www.findmail.com/listsaver/boston-online/
and offer analysis and opinions. The discussion
here seems to be moving away from majordomo,
although majordomo will probably be strongly
impacted by upcoming versions of Windows NT.
--
Wayne McGuire
http://www.cybercom.net/~wmcguire
References:
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