Re: McCoy is Right! New Mail Format to Start Now.
At 3:12 PM 12/15/94, Timothy C. May wrote:
If we make the leap, I say make the leap to the Web:
cave drawings --> text --> e-mail --> Web
(By Web I of course mean the whole ball of wax involving HTML/HTTP/etc.)
This is not a rejection of new technology, just a wise selection of which technology to bet on.
HTTP and email, serve different transport purposes. I don't think I really need to explain in what ways they are different, because we all know. Suffice it to say that mailing lists work better as a mailing list then it ever could as a web page, even with forms and all that stuff. A mailing list is a different transport-method choice then HTTP is. But there's no reason why you couldn't mail html documents. html isn't a "transport" choice, but a "content" choice. Maybe in the future all of our mail readers will be able to render html, and people will send html mail, with anchors and ordered lists and whatever else. That's something I think is likely to happen, eventually. Email and HTTP are transport mechanisms, whereas html and ascii text (which of course is a subset of html) are content formats. And MIME is a mechanism for describing what types of content formats are contained in the message, whether the message is a usenet article, a piece of email, or a web page. A given "transmission" of course can't be both email and HTTP, but it could be email and use MIME and be html. Or be http and mime and html. I don't think we'll ever stop using email in favor of the web and HTTP, because they serve different purposes. I don't think Tim really does thinks we'll stop using email either, since I've heard him deprecate the web several times. He is just trying to convince us not to use MIME (or html for that matter) in email we send to the list, and thinks maybe this argument will convince us and not result in us calling him a technophobe. :)
Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
(By Web I of course mean the whole ball of wax involving HTML/HTTP/etc.)
This is not a rejection of new technology, just a wise selection of which technology to bet on.
HTTP and email, serve different transport purposes. I don't think I really need to explain in what ways they are different, because we all know. Suffice it to say that mailing lists work better as a mailing list then it ever could as a web page, even with forms and all that stuff. A mailing list is a different transport-method choice then HTTP is.
Agreed, and I think my follow-up clarified my claim that the Web is the likely successor to standard e-mail. I think a generation exposed to Mosaic and similar browsers will want to find ways to use these windows into the Net for _nearly everything_. They will not want to buy or learn separate mail programs, negotiate separate accounts, or deal with MIME sorts of issues. They will ask for, and get, "gateways" between mail and the Web. (Gateways may not be the right word.) (We see this already, on the CP list, with Web pages containing the Cypherpunks list, with Web versions of my FAQ, etc. In the next few months, let alone the next few years, I expect to see more and more people reading the list via someone's Web pages. Maybe their own, maybe someone else's, etc.)
I don't think we'll ever stop using email in favor of the web and HTTP, because they serve different purposes. I don't think Tim really does thinks we'll stop using email either, since I've heard him deprecate the web several times. He is just trying to convince us not to use MIME (or html for that matter) in email we send to the list, and thinks maybe this argument will convince us and not result in us calling him a technophobe. :)
I'm not sure what "deprecate the web" means here. I use "lynx" fairly regularly to retrieve stuff, and think it's pretty useful. I'm also a prime candidate for getting Netscape, when a few things stabilize (I won't say what, as that will then trigger the "Why don't you use X?" sorts of comments I get). My main point is that the most compelling strategy seems to be to stick with ASCII for a while, avoid minor-but-painful gains with Postscript, Acrobat, Replica, TeX, FrameViewer, etc., and then jump to the Web/html/http/blah blah when the time is right. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Cypherpunks list: majordomo@toad.com with body message of only: subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tc/tcmay
Timothy C. May wrote:B
My main point is that the most compelling strategy seems to be to stick with ASCII for a while, avoid minor-but-painful gains with Postscript, Acrobat, Replica, TeX, FrameViewer, etc., and then jump to the Web/html/http/blah blah when the time is right.
I have noticed that folks with a Unix background have a rather higher tolerance for stuff that sort of works, most of the time, if you fiddle enough, than folks with Dos/Windows/Mac background I suspect brain damage caused by a "make" utility that treats spaces as semanticly different from tabs. AAargh! :-) (But I am not an operating system bigot, I will freely admit that segments and REPE CMPS have led to disturbing mental symptoms amongst us PC folk.) But seriously folks, GUI tools for manipulating and communicating information are just wonderfully superior. MIME etc provides a standard for such things. Problem is of course that it does not yet provide an entirely satisfactory reality. The standard is not yet standard. Which is why you are probably reading this in a monospaced font with hard carriage returns, rather than the proportionally spaced font and soft line breaks that you get in the WWW --------------------------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we James A. Donald are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. jamesd@netcom.com
participants (3)
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James A. Donald -
jrochkin＠cs.oberlin.edu -
tcmay＠netcom.com