Re: [tlug] VT100 Display Capability in Email (Re: Rendering HTMLEmail)

[bruno raoult <bruno@example.com>]

Godwin Stewart wrote:
> HTML bloat is even more undesireable in foreign languages where accents are
> used. Think of the past participle "créé", 4 letters. Now put it into HTML
> as coded in e-mails and you get "créé" - 18 characters. So,
> in a multipart/alternative mail, you get the original 4 letters plus the 18
> characters of the HTML version, that's 22 in total, and a 450% increase in
> size, *and* I'm not counting the markup.
> 
> Now consider that ISPs *pay* for the bandwidth their subscribers consume
> even if they don't visibly pass those costs down to the user in many
> countries. If things get out of hand they have to increase the subscription
> fee in order to pay for the excess bandwidth. In some countries, broadband
> subscribers frequently have bandwidth quotas imposed, in others they pay
> according to bandwidth used.

Hi Godwin.

HTML is different from encoding: It is possible to encode HTML in UTF-8,
for instance, avoiding these long sequences. Anyway, I think it is not
really a problem:
Even if we consider that 5%-10% of French characters are special and
need this 400% size increase, this would hardly disturb your ISP. Much
less than usual "reply without cutting old parts of messages", and
especially binary attachments.
For instance, your own email, base-64 encoded, used around 1,500 bytes
for 950 useful bytes (Just made "wc" on part of the message source and
the equivalent part of the message in my mailer - forgive me if the
numbers are not fully exact).

But I agree, HTML costs more than plain text. But you get colors ;-) No,
this *not* a troll, and it is probably not necessary to answer this last
sentence, Stephen :)

br.

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