[ltp] Re: Google Group

[Ajai Khattri]

On Thu, 17 Jan 2013, Sandro wrote:

> I am sorry. I did not know your hatred for markup was so vivid.

I think this comes up on every mailing list ever made and every time 
people have to explain why email must really stay as plain text. Im 
guessing to some people it sounded like you weren't even aware of that 
(simply Googling probably would have found at least one discussion in some 
list perhaps ?).

> First, quoting opinions from the '90s don't prove a point. If we stick to
> what people think in the first place, we would still cure infectious
> diseases by bloodletting in stead of antibiotics. If inventions' intentions
> should remain sole, the rocket would be for blowing stuff up, not flying
> robots to mars.

But you're also ignoring the fact that there's a history and legacy here. 

Like it or not, plain text is a lowest common denominator and works pretty 
much across every kind of network / device / software.

> Github is so much better than bugzilla because you don't have to *read* a
> single letter, you can just glance at the screen without glasses and see
> what part is quote. Different shade. What part is code. Different type-set.
> It's color-coded. And they didn't do that to annoy the open source tech
> people. No, they all agree it's more convenient.

Actually many email programs (both GUI and non-GUI) often highlight quoted 
text in different colors / shades - you dont need HTML markup to do that. 
Even terminals have color :-)

Same for certain characters used - they have been around long enough for 
them to be treated automatically by many programs. Even signatures de 
facto rules if you look hard enough.

> That said, ofcourse I am not assuming you're gonna do something on my
> account. I didn't know you were using this method *voluntarily*. I didn't
> know that any problems or valuable solutions are to remain private because
> god forbid google would archive this communication or outsiders could
> conveniently read back what was discussed.

Its like the guys that built GMail: it automatically top-posts by default 
and on mailing lists that is often a definate no-no and considered poor 
netiquette. The people that built GMail didn't do their homework (or 
simply didn't care).

> But look at it this way, I have never seen so many replies in a single
> digest.

You simply haven't been around long enough



-- 
Aj. (who's been using email since 1988 :-)