[23118] in APO-L
Re: [APO-L] -L format
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Packy Anderson)
Wed Nov 6 10:15:39 2002
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 09:42:02 -0500
Reply-To: packy@dardan.com
From: Packy Anderson <packy@dardan.com>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.05.10211060901530.17408-100000@callisto.acsu.buffalo.edu>
On Wed, 6 Nov 2002, Vehlow, Richard wrote:
> With all due respect, this is almost 2003 and no longer 1988 (when
> APO-l was founded) or 1993 (when APOSOC was founded). How much longer
> before we can get with the times? If someone out of 500 subscribers
> still reads email on a vintage TRS-80 with 300 baud modem, do we still
> have to keep the list at their level, or can we encourage them to
> finally move up in technology level?
>
Rich, for the record, I read my mail at home using a Macintosh running OSX
connecting to the net with a cable modem; I am capable of reading any
format someone sends me. I still CHOOSE to use elm to read my mail
because, frankly, it's faster than any other mail client I've seen and I
spend less time waiting and more time READING.
-
At work, however, I have access to my home email only through the web
gateway I set up that uses Squirrelmail. I was not able to read either of
your replies to my posting--I had to wait until Peri quoted it in a
text-only format. In my opinion, that's not acceptable.
-
It's not a matter of keeping the level of technology of the list at a
lowest common denominator for people who are running old equipment. It's
a matter of recognizing that out of 500 subscribers, you will have 400 who
are running identical WindowsXP/Microsoft Outlook setups, 1 who's running
on vintage equipment, and 99 who are running on some combination of
WinXP/Win2K/MacOS/Linux/YouNameIt and
Outlook/Eudora/Groupwise/Pine/Elm/MH.
Equally current technology, but DIFFERENT technology. The only way to
ensure that everyone can read messages is to adhere strongly to accepted
STANDARDS, and as much as you and Microsoft might dislike it, the standard
for email is still plain text.
-
Alpha Phi Omega is all about being inclusive. What would it say about us
if we required people to run particular software just to read our mailing
list?
-
While we're at it, is there any way to stop the list from stripping blank
lines from text messages? It only makes messages smaller by (on average)
10-15 characters per message (since each blank line is ONE character) and
it makes me do stupid things like creare lines with nothing but a dash so
I can have 'blank' lines between my paragraphs.
-
YiLFS,
-packy
