Re: MIME vs HTML

[Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr>]

Joe Wells <jbw@cs.bu.edu> writes:

> >>>>> "Lars" == Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
> 
>   Lars> <META content=text/html;charset=iso-8859-1 http-equiv=Content-Type>
> 
>   Lars> in the message, which is something Outlook Express seems to put into
>   Lars> everything it sends out, w3 will render this thusly:
> 
>   Lars> html;charset=iso-8859-1 http-equiv=Content-Type>
> 
> This is the only possible legal interpretation of the purported HTML
> document.  There's a standard defining these things, you know.

The trouble is that users expect us to fix things so they work, no
matter how abhorrent the source of the brokenness.  Here is a
beautiful diatribe by Kyle Jones on that topic:

    From: kyle_jones@wonderworks.com (Kyle Jones)
    Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.gnus
    Subject: Re: `AW:' not recognised as reply indicator
    Date: 14 Mar 1997 01:07:46 -0500
    Organization: Wonderworks Inc.

    Jens Lautenbacher  <jens@lemcbed.lem.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote:
     > Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@trym.ifi.uio.no> writes:
     > 
     > > Florian Weimer <fw@cygnus.stuttgart.netsurf.de> writes:
     > > 
     > > > I've recently encountered some messages which where using
     > > > `AW:' as reply indicator (abbreviation for the German word
     > > > `Antwort', AFAIK generated only by MS Exchange).  Of course,
     > > > the software which produces such awkward messages should be
     > > > fixed, but I think it would be a good idea to make the regexp
     > > > in `gnus-simplify-subject' user-customisable.
     > > 
     > > It's never a good idea to cater to broken software.  Using "AW:"
     > > instead of "Re:" is broken.
     > > 
     > 
     > But it's the wrong end that suffers from your decision not to
     > cope with this gracefully (that means me). *I* use gnus, so
     > people on the other end will get non-broken messages. *I* will
     > get these AW: type mails (and thats from people who must use
     > this damned billy toy) and its *me* who will get a totally
     > fudged out threading because gnus doesn't want to cope with
     > it....
     > 
     > PLEASE....

    I can't help but laugh, because this is major deja news with
    regard to me, VM and all kinds of brokenness in other more
    popular software.

    Like it or not, we are in the minority.  The minority always
    suffers, unless they have money or nuclear weapons.  This means
    you and me.

    Lars and I suffer because there is no end to the Internet access
    crapware emerging from the nether regions of PC software vendors.
    You suffer because dung rolls downhill and there are limits to
    the amount of it we are able (or willing) to shovel for you.

    The other day I found myself thinking that there isn't any real
    incentive to strive for interoperability.  Given the amount of
    brokenness out there and vendors colossal indifference to it, the
    amount of work seems the same as it was in the old days when
    everything was proprietary.  The truth is probably that things
    were just impossible back then, so little was exepcted by the
    users.  But you begin to see how bad the situation is when people
    trying to adhere to standards feel like Sisyphus eternally
    rolling a monstrous dungball uphill.  (Then again, maybe I just
    need to take a vacation.)

    The point of article is to say... We're in this together.  Take
    out your frustration on Microsoft.  If you have nuclear weapons,
    use them.  Otherwise just stop buying their software.  Gates
    doesn't need any more money.  The world is what we make it.