Re: b-greek index: April 17, 1999

From: Trevor Jenkins (Trevor.Jenkins@suneidesis.com)
Date: Mon Apr 19 1999 - 12:21:46 EDT


"Paul J. Bodin" <pjbodin@sirius.com> comments:

> On Mon, 19 Apr 1999 06:07:02 -0500, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>
>> The problem that remains,
>> however, is that I think there are also people--I don't know how many it
>> might be--who use plain DOS or who use Unix operating systems, and I don't
>> think this would work for them. We ought to have something usable by
>> everyone without exception.
>
> This is an extremely significant problem. Although I now use a Windows
> platform exclusively to read e-mail, when I was doing my graduate work
> at Union Seminary I would often use a dumb terminal in the Columbia
> system to read my mail. Such terminals are most commonly simple
> text-only Unix workstations that are not capable of graphics mode
> displays or font switching. They would not be capable of displaying
> *any* alternate font. I no longer use such machines, but many of our
> subscribers who read their mail from an academic institution may still
> use such equipment. We should not adopt any alternative that would
> make their mail impossible to read...

I would not like to see this list have to sanction the wholescale use of
HTML encoded email---for that is what the font suggestion requires. The use
of HTML more than doubles the network bandwidth required for every message
(the plain text version, the HTML text version plus its HTML markup). For
those of us who have to pay for our telephone connections to our ISP, even
local calls, this also means that we end up paying double for that message.
If some other markup scheme is proposed, XML is the most likely candidate,
then let us be aware that the tools are not available. As somebody who uses
a mixture of platforms, Windows, Mac and UNIX to name but three, there are
other issues such as character code conversions to contend with---if you've
ever tried exchanging a Microsoft Word document between Windows and Mac
users then you'll know all about that hoary problem.

And at last a posting to B-Greek where I can contribute. :-) I work as an
email consultant for the world's leading manufacturer of PCs. I know all
about SGML and XML having been part of the ISO committee that formulated
SGML and most recently co-authored a book on XML.

Regards, Trevor

--

<>< Re: deemed!

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