But there is already: html.  Freely available readers have been around for
years, on just about every platform, and they handle unicode as well.  You
may not like it, but it's still there.  You don't need to translate all of
the other formats you mention, just as you don't translate them now for
ASCII.

A better question is when most people will upgrade to a freely available
8-bit or unicode aware transport agent.  Many people run sendmail -- which
has only in the last few years become 8-bit compliant.

--
Chris Anderson
Director, Technical Support
Unify Corporation



> -----Original Message-----
> From: George Frajkor [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, November 22, 1999 10:47 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Has Microsoft destroyed mailing lists? / Rant Exchange?
>
>
> Chris Anderson wrote:
>
> > In MY humble opinion, Plain/Text has had its day, and is
> long due to be
> > relegated to the history books.  You may quibble about the
> pro's and con's
> > of HTML vs RTF vs whatever, but the point of email is
> communications.  And
> > there are better ways to communicate than via plain text.
> > Chris Anderson
> > Director, Technical Support
> > Unify Corporation
>
>
>      In my humble opinion , plain text is the only way to go until
> there is a universal reader, which functions under any operating
> system, that can read any format.
>    Today, there is not.  Reading a formatted attachment is impossible
> for many systems.  Plain text is readable by all.   That is really the
> only issue at this time.
>     AsCII may be unsuitable for foreign languages but until there is a
> UNICODE reader available for every system, and a way in which that
> UNICODE reader can correctly translate Works, Word, Word Perfect, Ami
> Pro, Text 602, etc., etc., and in all of their various versions from 1
> to infinity,  ASCII is the only choice.   Formatted attachments of any
> kind, including html, should not be permitted in ordinary email.
> There usually is no purpose to it anyway.
>
>
>
>     Jan George Frajkor                      _!_
>  School of Journalism, Carleton Univ.      --!--
>  1125 Colonel By Drive                       |
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>