I disagree.  I find that it is very convenient to highlight a point in my
email with an appropriate underline, or color it red, or bold it, etc.
Communications is about getting your point across.  Whatever tools that you
have to do that just makes your job the easier.

Why do you think that such conventions as *bold* or _underline_ or SHOUT or
'> quoted text' came about?  They are workarounds to the limitations of
7-bit plan ascii text.

--
Chris Anderson
Director, Technical Support
Unify Corporation



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Howie [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, November 22, 1999 11:21 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Has Microsoft destroyed mailing lists? / Rant Exchange?
>
>
> On Mon, 22 Nov 1999, 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
>                                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Exactly, and this is precisely why plain text is the lowest common
> denominator. Just because plain text was the only medium of
> choice back in
> the 70s shouldn't relegate it to the history books. It worked then and
> still works now.
>
> Communication is all about getting *information* sent back and forth.
> Whether you embelish it to look cute with bolding,
> underlining etc., adds
> nothing to the information content, it just bloats the
> message to a size
> much larger than it should be, wastes bandwidth and detracts from
> interoperability.
>
> Keep the cute marked-up text for Web pages and local Micro$loth
> proprietary email systems.
>
> > there are better ways to communicate than via plain text.
>
> Like?
>
> Scotty
> --
> Steve Howie                                     [log in to unmask]
> Netnews and Listserv Admin                      519 824-4120 x2556
> University of Guelph
> "If it's not Scottish it's CRRRRAAAAAAAPPPPPP!"
>