Subject: Re: Writing Internet Drafts on a Macintosh

From: Johnny Eriksson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 13:56:19 WET

Stephen McHenry <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Am I the only one that finds a certain bit of irony in the fact that the 
> last IETF conference provided "peek at the future" style networking - i.e., 
> 11MB 802.11 wireless throughout the entire hotel, so that people could 
> literally walk from one end of the hotel to the other with laptop perched 
> in the crook of one arm while using the other to do e-mail, web browsing 
> etc... ...AND that these are the same people with archaic browsers and 
> e-mail clients that can't handle recent advances in technology - even to 
> the point of using "dumb" devices that can only handle ASCII?

Not everyone considers a move from ASCII to HTML "an advance in technology".

--Johnny

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From: John Border <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 09:04:29 -0500

Somewhere in the flood of email on this topic which is filling my inbox, we
have lost track of the fact that the IETF does not produce documents only for
its own use.  The idea is that everyone everywhere should have access to them
and the least common denominator is still ASCII.  (At least, the practical
LCD.  I can think of few extra uses for the stone tablets at working group
meetings though...)

John

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From: Sandy Wills <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 09:15:10 -0500

Johnny Eriksson wrote:
> > ...AND that these are the same people with archaic browsers and
> > e-mail clients that can't handle recent advances in technology
> > - even to the point of using "dumb" devices that can only handle
> > ASCII?
> 

</lurk>
  Think of Radio and TV.
  TV was an extension of Radio, using technology developed from Radio,
not available until engineers had spent a couple of decades pondering
Radio improvements, and mostly using parts only available because Radio
had created a strong electronics industry.  So, TV was "an advance in
technology" over Radio.
  And, of course, TV allowed for improved communication in some ways. 
It just tends to have a very low signal/noise ratio, making it harder
for the user to find any useful data on the boob tube than it is on your
radio.  It also _requires_ a much more complicated infrastructure to
pass a message, more effort from the creater, and more attention from
the recipient (two senses - a primary and a secondary - engaged vs. just
one secondary sense), so that people who could multitask while listening
to the radio can't do anything else while watching TV.
  Now, TV has it's uses.  It's just not very efficient for transferring
audio.  If you don't _need_ pictures, then you're wasting bandwidth with
TV.  And there's never enough bandwidth.

  Which is exactly my objection to HTML vs. ASCII.  People post in ASCII
because they think they have something useful to say - and it's easy for
anyone who wants to get it, read it, store it.  People post in HTML
because they think they have created something pretty, and want to share
it - and the post is not universally viewable, takes time to get and
space to store, and is generally pretty but useless.  So, you arrive at
a simple two-state system: pretty people use HTML, and useful people use
ASCII.  There are, of course, exceptions, but if you see a post in HTML
you already have a strong clue about the writer's value system.
<lurk>

-- 
: Unable to locate coffee.  Operator halted.