On Tue, Apr 19, 2005 at 12:07:59PM +0100, Cormac Lawler wrote:
On 4/19/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Chad Perrin wrote:
[snip]
If you really want the thing to look nice and be inaccessible to many, perhaps you should distribute it as a PDF attachment instead of an HTML email. The preferred reaction to finding out that some people don't like HTML cluttering up their inboxes, though, might simply be to provide an option for either text or HTML at subscription time. That way, people get what they want, rather than getting the entire HTML layout when all they want is information.
Agreed. PDF is universal, pretty, and can have links in it - which is why someone wanted it in HTML in the first place.
First of all, there seems to be misunderstanding about the content of this html email. It is not meant to be a full replica of the quarto, ie every page designed etc, but simply a pleasant layout of multilingual links to those already designed pages on the foundation wiki or meta. It would direct the person to the release message in their language (in the mail) and from here to the actual web version. There are also links at the side panel to these pages.
In that case, I really don't see how gussying up what is effectively no more than a short blurb and a couple of links with HTML is worth alienating some readers.
Thirdly, that one pixel image used by spammers is surely inserted into the email by the spammers, no? I mean, we're not going to be doing that, right?
You miss the point. I don't think anyone is suggesting that HTML is avoided because they don't trust WMF's intentions. Rather, many of us have HTML rendering turned off even in HTML-capable email clients specifically because of the danger of opening an email that contains such dirty tricks as spammers use. Thus, even many HTML clients have been intentionally rendered incapable of rendering HTML for all practical purposes. Thus, the number of people unable to view an HTML email properly grows.
I currently use Mutt (a CLI email client), but not long ago I was getting list traffic through Thunderbird (a GUI email client). Even so, I was using "simplified HTML" settings that did not display images at all. The end result was that all that prettified HTML formatting spammers used was gone, as were inlined images. Although Thunderbird did a reasonably good job of turning HTML email into what looked like text-only email, it still rendered some HTML-formatted email into gibberish. Luckily, what it handled fairly well was email produced in email clients that had HTML formatting turned on by default -- which is all I really needed it to do, so that I could read emails from people who just didn't know any better.
These days, HTML email with inline images and fancy formatting is almost universally the territory of spammers, in my experience. How many people with the same experiences I've had do you want to exclude from your announcements? How many people being unable to read your announcement email would be considered "too many"?
I do web development for money. I'm in the midst of a fairly substantial project right now, in fact. One principle of design that I always advocate when working with the client for whom I'm doing the design is accessibility that is as universal as possible. It's for this reason that the html/xhtml code should be cross-browser tested, W3C standards compliant, and free of as much client-side scripting as possible. It should also be renderable to a text-based browser if at all possible. Email is even more constrained than webpages for purposes of accessibility, not only because of greater limitations on email clients than on browsers, but because people are more inclined to want nothing more than the information. The principles of providing maximum accessibility remain important, though.
Email is a communication medium, not interactive entertainment. One does not receive email "sites" where consistent navigation elements throughout are important characteristics. One receives a single, hopefully informative, communique, and perhaps some attachment files.
From where I sit, the justifications for HTML in email seem somewhat
hollow, when set against the matter of maximum accessibility, and much of that (to bring this full circle) is because of the common desire to avoid making oneself vulnerable to spammers.
If you turn off the functionality that makes you vulnerable to the dirty tricks of spammers who verify your address validity by use of HTML so they can spam you some more, you also turn off the functionality that makes an HTML email even readable.
Finally, the PDF solution would be elegant, and could be used for the print version. One problem is that apparently we can't host that version on meta (as it's a proprietary format) and also, we would have to wait until the various versions are fully translated before we did this. But more fundamentally, we'd need someone to do it.
The format was initially produced only by a proprietary application, but has subsequently been reverse-engineered so that it can be produced by any number of other applications, including even OpenOffice.org (a FLOSS competitor of Microsoft Office). Whether or not its proprietary roots is a problem is something that will have to be decided by other heads than mine.
-- Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]