To the dismay of few, a new proposal to the W3C could mean the end of the greater-than symbols that multiply like rabbits alongside quoted and re-quoted email text.
Three email application vendors have proposed an addition to the hypertext markup language (HTML) that would enhance its display in email messages and their multiple replies.
The HTML Threading Proposal, co-authored by Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Lotus, and submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium, would embed structured data into messages to make them more informative and visually easier to sort out. It uses the "CITE" tag in HTML 4.0 to tie properties to a piece of text to identify its "role" in the message. The Extensible Markup Language (XML), a higher-level markup language related to HTML, is used to represent the properties themselves.
As an application vendor, "I could associate data with any piece of text in a thread," said Microsoft product manager Christine Chang. "Given that data I could create a wide range of features."
When a recipient replies to an incoming message now, the email application typically quotes the text of the original message by means of a string of greater-than symbols alongside the original text. As the exchange grows, the symbols multiply, making it increasingly difficult to follow the structure of the exchange - especially when more than two people are involved.
The three companies represent email applications including Microsoft's Outlook Express, Qualcomm's Eudora, and Lotus Notes, business collaboration software that incorporates email. As an open standard, it is hoped that all email applications would eventually incorporate the new features.
The added HTML-based information, coded into messages using XML, could include an author's name, home page, and message statistics. Chang says information embedded could optionally include instructive data on authors like organizations they belong to, their real name, phone number, and so on - should they want such data alongside their contributions.
The proposal would also allow viewing of messages by different ordering schemes - such as by date or by author.
"You'd be able to create unique views for each particular author of a thread," Chang said. "How that's implemented would really be up to each email vendor."
Text display options could employ HTML tags to add color, text size, and other styles to distinguish different messages and their authors.
But a Qualcomm senior engineer, one of the authors of the proposal, imagines even snazzier application features. "You could potentially get a message, double-click on quoted stuff, and it would go find the original message," Resnick said. "Or you just want to send the quoted person a new message - click and you've got a new message."
The enhancement could apply to message threads in Usenet newsgroups as well, depending on how application vendors incorporate the feature.
