[LINK] Re: Limit Email Size to Reduce Carbon Emissions?

[Rick Welykochy]

Tom Worthington wrote:

> Better still would be better to omit the PDF attachment from the mail 
> message,

It is difficult to explain to MS-brainwashed amateurs: please do not send
a Word or PDF document contain, oh, 10 to 20 lines of text. I just rec'd
another Word doc the other day containing about 10 lines of plain text.

HTML email is a culprit as well, but only because of truly horrific HTML
text generation by the crappiest software coder on the planet that we
all love to hate. HTML can be efficient hand introduce a small overhead,
maybe doubling the original plain text in size. But oh no. Not in the
following braindead example produced by on of the most popular email
clients.

Braindeead HTML email example:

  plain text email:  915 bytes
  same in HTML:     8606 bytes

That is about a tenfold increase in size with zero increase (in this case)
in readability or comprehension.

Why is this?

Well, the HTML rightfully contains a few CSS definitions for style.
And then the HTML generator summarily eschews the style and generates
crap like the following for every line of the email:

    <SPAN style=3D"FONT-SIZE: =
    10pt">Proposed=20
    Project Timeline;<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P><![if !supportLists]>
    <P class=3DMsoNormal=20
    style=3D"MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in; mso-list: l0 level1 =
    lfo1"><FONT=20
    face=3DArial><SPAN style=3D"FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><SPAN style=3D"mso-list: =
    Ignore">-<SPAN=20
    style=3D"FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"><FONT=20
    size=3D2>        =
    </FONT></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN><![endif]>

The plain text for the above crap is as follows:

    Proposed Project Timeline

This is astonishingly wasteful. Furthermore, often two adjacent words are
each encased in the above obfuscated mummification for no good reason.


How is this for a single <CR> (a blank line in plain text)?

    <P class=3DMsoNormal><SPAN style=3D"FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><FONT =
    face=3DArial><SPAN=20
    class=3D125551606-28112007> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
    <P class=3DMsoNormal=20
    style=3D"MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in; mso-list: l0 level1 =
    lfo1"><![if !supportLists]><FONT=20
    face=3DArial><SPAN style=3D"FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><SPAN style=3D"mso-list: =
    Ignore">-<SPAN=20
    style=3D"FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"><FONT=20
    size=3D2>        =

Note how the HTML embeds style attributes in each tag instead of using
the defined stylesheet. Even someone in the first week of a class on
coding HTML and CSS knows not to do this.

This stuff is not rocket surgery!


> Ideally the tools used to create documents and messages should produce 
> appropriately formatted and sized content for the intended use. But this 
> does not appear to be something marketing people are able or willing to 
> do, so perhaps there is scope for more add-on tools.

I know it's a generalisation, but IMHE (in my humble experience) marketing
people (especially) love to consume vast resources to feel that they are
doing some sort of outstanding job. And to tell them any different or
suggest how they might conserve resources usually results in a verbal
slap across the face.

Gone are the days when we would carefully edit down a plain text email
to save bandwidth. We have all the bandwidth we need now, and more (some
would disagree, I know), and yet we use it all up with wasteful practices,
garbage emails (SPAM, etc) and YouBoob.


cheers
rickw



-- 
_________________________________
Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services

Our "neoconservatives" are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon
and evil as Hell.
      -- Edward Abbey. Naturalist and author. 1927-1989.