At 09:29 AM 11/22/99 -0800, Chris Anderson wrote:
<SNIP>
>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.
>
>Feel free to flame away.

No flames here. Just a strong viewpoint from a career word-communicator.
Plain text does the job simply and effectively for the most people (North
Americans and Europeans I've mailed; don't know about the rest of the world
<G>):

-- Many people still don't have Web-based or other mail services that
can read HTML, fonts, colors, graphics and other "stuff." So I would
prefer simple text messages that they can read easily and quickly
without having to plow through "stuff" that means nothing to them. Yes,
maybe "lowest common denominator," but they're also important and
respected subscribers.

-- Many list messages are simple announcements, information, queries,
answers and comments that can stand on their own without the need for
the hype and posterism of headlines, colors or graphical elements.

-- A personal pet-peeve: English is a beautiful, rich language. Schools
should again spend the time necessary to teach correct -- and thus
effective -- use of English BEFORE spending time teaching HTML. (A Web
page with misspellings and grammatical errors is a real turn-off.)

Jim Styer, PioNet operator
A Michigan list for persons interested in barbershop harmony
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