Re: [ATM] Time to change the list format?

[Mark Holm <mdholm@telerama.com>]

Woodchuck wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Mar 2006, Richard Ozer wrote:

> Downsides:
> 2) Necessity of being online to read messages.  Some pay by the
> hour or byte. Some live in households with only a single phone
> line, needed for incoming calls.


I agree on this point.

Ordinary, text email has an advantage of being fairly efficient in terms
of final bandwidth to the end user.  We have a bunch of members that are
either bandwidth limited, or are paying by bandwidth as Richard notes.

Any web based interface incurs the overhead of html  Since I have hand
written a reasonable amount of html, I know that even tightly written
html adds at least 20-25%.  (If it is going to be standards compliant.
It is possible to write really minimalistic html that adds less bloat,
but it is usually not possible to make it comply with the standards, so
it really is bad form.)  Program generated html is rarely as tight as
hand coded.  Often, it is a lot more bloated, adding 100% or more.

Also, email delivery is pretty much automated once you connect.  The
machines do all the dirty work, so it gets done quickly.  You log on and
bang!, all your messages start coming down as fast as the machines can
push them.  It makes for short connect times: an advantage for those
with pay by the hour or limited phone line availability situations.  A
web interface usually implies waiting for a human to decide to click a
link to read a message: orders of magnitude slower.

Mark Holm
mdholm@telerama.com

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