[EAS]Send Me ASCII

[pjk]

Subject:   Send Me ASCII

(from NewsScan Daily, 4 January 2002)
<http://www.newsscan.com/>

SEND ME ASCII: A DAY IN THE WIRED LIFE
Sun chief executive Scott McNealy, like the rest of us, gets a lot of 
e-mail messages: "I get hundreds a day, I review them all, answer
many, forward many for response, hate the junk, I type really fast,
ignore perfect grammer and typin, getting more over time, but can
read e-mail from  any browser, have T1's into my homes and read all
that is left from the day  before I go to sleep after the boys go down
and get up before they do to read what came in while sleeping... I
HATE attachments, MSFT docs are the  WORST! I send them back. Send me
ascii." (USA Today 4 Jan 2002)
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2002/01/04/email-overload.htm

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I'm glad somebody famous said it for me. Very much my sentiments also.
Luckily I don't get quite as much email as McNealy, usually not more
than 50 a day, but I don't type real fast. 
Frankly, html email is a waste of ASCII character space. I now just
delete it.
Attachments are a real nuisance and only justify themselves if they
represent real work in progress. Even then, avoid large attachments.
When possible, create an access-limited group work Web site instead,
and stick the document(s) there, where the interested parties can
retrieve or even just read them, without cluttering up their computer
with more files or their desks with more paper. This is done too
rarely. 
Everything else should be plain ASCII text for efficient email
transactions. Think about what you expect from the email recipient,
and know your mailer's properties well enough (e.g. via cc:s to
yourself) to know what your recipient will actually find in their
mailbox. 
Also see <http://www.yale.edu/engineering/eng-info/msg00886.html>.

   --PJK