Message formatting

Message formatting
[Martin Taylor 2007.02.13.10.33]

[From Bruce Abbott (2007.02.12.1835 EST)]

Bill Powers
(2007.02.12.0823 MST)

Bruce Abbott
(2007.02.11.18:15 EST)

I don’t know how these messages look on your screens, but on
mine, they are a mixture of minuscule and microscopic typefaces, with
absolutely no indication of which section belongs with which original
message, no “>” “>>” etc indications, and
no way of knowing wheich bit is written by which author.

I manage to read the message by pretending to be sending a
response, and magnifying the text from “normal” to
“bigger” (not “big”; that’s still mostly
illegible, at least for some sections).

There must be some way you can send your messages that allows for
nested quoting, and that uses typefaces larger than 3 pixels high?
Maybe one can see it when using a PC to read the messages, and this is
yet another way that Microsoft has chosen to make life difficult for
Mac users, but if it’s something you authors can do something about,
please do!

Messages from Bill and Bruce never used to be like this. Only
from Bjorn did I have a problem until relatively recently.

Martin

[From Richard Kennaway (2007.02.13.1552 GMT)]

[Martin Taylor 2007.02.13.10.33]
I don't know how these messages look on your screens, but on mine, they are a mixture of minuscule and microscopic typefaces, with absolutely no indication of which section belongs with which original message, no ">" ">>" etc indications, and no way of knowing wheich bit is written by which author.

I manage to read the message by pretending to be sending a response, and magnifying the text from "normal" to "bigger" (not "big"; that's still mostly illegible, at least for some sections).

There must be some way you can send your messages that allows for nested quoting, and that uses typefaces larger than 3 pixels high? Maybe one can see it when using a PC to read the messages, and this is yet another way that Microsoft has chosen to make life difficult for Mac users, but if it's something you authors can do something about, please do!

Messages from Bill and Bruce never used to be like this. Only from Bjorn did I have a problem until relatively recently.

The problem results from using an email program that sends email as HTML documents. This is evil and should never be done. Bjorn's email is even worse, as his mailer is formatting the mail with Microsoft Word and then mashing that into HTML, producing emails ten times as large as plain text would be and less readable.

There is a standard method, as old as email, for indicating quotes by ">" signs in the left margin, and all proper emailers support it. Microsoft Outlook, unless told otherwise, ignores this standard totally, and instead formats the message in multiple font sizes and colours, with no other indication at all of who said what. Anyone reading the messages with non-Microsoft software is likely to see, at best, plain unformatted text without quote indications, and at worst, what Martin describes.

Whether the emailer is Outlook or not, there should be a preferences setting somewhere to turn off fancy formatting. This needs to be turned off. The one true way of email is plain text.

I recommend Eudora as an alternative to Outlook.

-- Richard Kennaway

[From Bill Powers (2007.02.13.0910 MST)]

Martin Taylor 2007.02.13.10.33]

[From Bruce Abbott
(2007.02.12.1835 EST)] -

Bill Powers (2007.02.12.0823 MST)

Bruce Abbott (2007.02.11.18:15 EST)

I don’t know how these messages look on your screens, but on mine,
they are a mixture of minuscule and microscopic typefaces, with
absolutely no indication of which section belongs with which original
message, no “>” “>>” etc indications, and no
way of knowing wheich bit is written by which author.

I am using Eudora, under which the quoted sections above appear with
vertical lines down the left, one added vertical line for each sub-quote.
I see them now on my screen. A control->(shift period) adds a vertical
line, and a control-.(period) removes one.

When I view your post using Eudora, I see only a single vertical line
with, as you say, no indication of sub-quotes. When the same message is
copied into a reply window, the vertical lines appear properly.

This suggests that the vertical lines are an HTML feature. Your post does
appear to be an HTML post, because the text is preceded by

···
    0.00

HTML_MESSAGE
BODY: HTML included in message

My options are set up to “Send both plain and styled text.” You
may be set up to receive only plain text, but send styled text. I
don’t see any option like that in my Eudora. You’ll have to look at your
mail program.

In Eudora, I can remove all special text formatting (font size) in a
reply by highlighting the section of text and typing control-space.I
often have to do this with my own replies because for some reason they
pick up the formatting of text that’s already there in the reply.
Sometimes I do it with the received message, too, when the font comes
through in 4-point type. [But see PS – maybe changing the message font
has fixed that problem for me]

Let me know how this looks to you. I can send some test messages with
different options if you like.

Best.

Bill P.

P.S. I just changed my “message” font to Times New Roman and
now that is the font I see in your post. Still no multiple vertical
lines, though. Try changing your message font and see if that has any
effect. Mine had been set to “SimSun”, a non-existent font on
my machine. I just checked a post from Bjorn, which has been full of
small blue text, and now it’s normal!

[From Bruce Abbott (2007.02.13.1140 EST)] --

Richard Kennaway (2007.02.13.1552 GMT)

[Martin Taylor 2007.02.13.10.33]
I don't know how these messages look on your screens, but on mine,
they are a mixture of minuscule and microscopic typefaces, with
absolutely no indication of which section belongs with which
original message, no ">" ">>" etc indications, and no way of knowing
wheich bit is written by which author.

I manage to read the message by pretending to be sending a response,
and magnifying the text from "normal" to "bigger" (not "big"; that's
still mostly illegible, at least for some sections).

There must be some way you can send your messages that allows for
nested quoting, and that uses typefaces larger than 3 pixels high?
Maybe one can see it when using a PC to read the messages, and this
is yet another way that Microsoft has chosen to make life difficult
for Mac users, but if it's something you authors can do something
about, please do!

Messages from Bill and Bruce never used to be like this. Only from
Bjorn did I have a problem until relatively recently.

The problem results from using an email program that sends email as

HTML documents. This is evil and should never be done. Bjorn's
email is even worse, as his mailer is formatting the mail with
Microsoft Word and then mashing that into HTML, producing emails ten
times as large as plain text would be and less readable.

There is a standard method, as old as email, for indicating quotes by

">" signs in the left margin, and all proper emailers support it.
Microsoft Outlook, unless told otherwise, ignores this standard
totally, and instead formats the message in multiple font sizes and
colours, with no other indication at all of who said what. Anyone
reading the messages with non-Microsoft software is likely to see, at
best, plain unformatted text without quote indications, and at worst,
what Martin describes.

Whether the emailer is Outlook or not, there should be a preferences

setting somewhere to turn off fancy formatting. This needs to be
turned off. The one true way of email is plain text.

I'm glad that you and Martin mentioned this; I had no idea that Macs

formatted HTML code from Outlook in this way. What I was trying to do was to
find a good way to distinguish the quoted parties with a program (Outlook)
that does not appear to have the option of using the standard method that
you describe, and which I used when I still had Eudora.

I recommend Eudora as an alternative to Outlook.

The PC version of Eudora changed some years ago so that quoted material
would be indicated by a vertical line along the left margin rather than the
traditional ">" character. [But perhaps there is a way to produce this that
I did not discover when I was using the program.] Outlook does have the
option to use text rather than HTML, and I am using that here.

It's not quite the same, but does my use in this message of the ">" at the
beginning of each quoted paragraph adequately serve the purpose? Adding ">"
to the front of each line does not work well because automatic line-feeds
may change the formatting and leave the ">" marks buried inside the
paragraphs.

I would think that HTML code would be rendered similarly across platforms;
otherwise wouldn't you have trouble reading web pages -- most created on PCs
-- with your Mac? So I'm puzzled why you get a different font size. (I was
using a rather standard 12-point font.)

Bruce A.

[From Bill Powers (2007.02.13.0945 MST)]

Richard Kennaway (2007.02.13.1552 GMT) --

>The problem results from using an email program that sends email as
HTML documents. >This is evil and should never be done. Bjorn's
email is even worse, as his mailer is >formatting the mail with
Microsoft Word and then mashing that into HTML, producing >emails ten
times as large as plain text would be and less readable.

Just what we needed! Thank you, oh Guru of Bits! I am changing
immediately to sending plain text only, and using >, >>, and so forth
to indicate quote and subquotes. What should we do about "may use
quoted printable" under "Composing mail"? Will sending plain text
prevent the embedding of graphics in the post? Here is a sample
("Knuckles") from grandson Derek when he was in grade school.

Emacs!

Best,

Bill P.

1e82e664.jpg

[From Bruce Abbott (2007.02.13.1205 EST)]

Richard Kennaway (2007.02.13.1552 GMT)

>[Martin Taylor 2007.02.13.10.33]

Miracle of miracles, there IS as way to get Qutlook to use the standard way
of quoting! For those of you who are using Outlook, go to the "Tools" option
on the menu bar, then click "Options." On the "Preferences" page (it should
be on top), click on the "Email Options" button. Under "On replies and
forwards" and "When replying to a message," choose "Prefix each line of the
original message." A few lines below under "Prefix each line with" place the

character if it's not already there by default.

Bruce A.

[From Bruce Abbott (2007.02.13.1215 EST)]

Bill Powers (2007.02.13.0945 MST) --

Richard Kennaway (2007.02.13.1552 GMT)

>The problem results from using an email program that sends email as
HTML documents. >This is evil and should never be done. Bjorn's
email is even worse, as his mailer is >formatting the mail with
Microsoft Word and then mashing that into HTML, producing >emails ten
times as large as plain text would be and less readable.

Just what we needed! Thank you, oh Guru of Bits! I am changing
immediately to sending plain text only, and using >, >>, and so forth
to indicate quote and subquotes. What should we do about "may use
quoted printable" under "Composing mail"? Will sending plain text
prevent the embedding of graphics in the post? Here is a sample
("Knuckles") from grandson Derek when he was in grade school.

It wasn't embedded in the post, but was sent as an attachment.

Bruce A.

[From Bruce Nevin (2007.02.13 12:48 EST)]

“HTML should never be done” is a bit draconian. If you want to include a graphical image in the body of the message, you can turn on HTML formatting for just that message (Format>HTML).

Outlook.jpg

Any quoted messages remain quoted with the specified prefix (see below). LookOut warns you that its spell checker will no longer ignore material that is so quoted.

As you see, you can also choose a character other than > as the line prefix.

 /B

¬ -----Original Message-----
¬ From: Control Systems Group Network (CSGnet)
¬ [mailto:CSGNET@LISTSERV.UIUC.EDU] On Behalf Of Bruce Abbott
¬ Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 12:14 PM
¬ To: CSGNET@LISTSERV.UIUC.EDU
¬ Subject: Re: Message formatting
¬
¬ [From Bruce Abbott (2007.02.13.1215 EST)]
¬
¬ > Bill Powers (2007.02.13.0945 MST) –
¬ >
¬ > Richard Kennaway (2007.02.13.1552 GMT)
¬ >
¬ > >The problem results from using an email program that
¬ sends email as
¬ > HTML documents. >This is evil and should never be done. Bjorn’s
¬ > email is even worse, as his mailer is >formatting the mail with
¬ > Microsoft Word and then mashing that into HTML, producing
¬ >emails ten
¬ > times as large as plain text would be and less readable.
¬ >
¬ > Just what we needed! Thank you, oh Guru of Bits! I am changing
¬ > immediately to sending plain text only, and using >, >>,
¬ and so forth
¬ > to indicate quote and subquotes. What should we do about “may use
¬ > quoted printable” under “Composing mail”? Will sending plain text
¬ > prevent the embedding of graphics in the post? Here is a sample
¬ > (“Knuckles”) from grandson Derek when he was in grade school.
¬
¬ It wasn’t embedded in the post, but was sent as an attachment.
¬
¬ Bruce A.
¬

[From Richard Kennaway (2007.02.1831 GMT)]

[From Bill Powers (2007.02.13.0945 MST)]

Richard Kennaway (2007.02.13.1552 GMT) --

The problem results from using an email program that sends email as HTML documents. >This is evil and should never be done. Bjorn's email is even worse, as his mailer is >formatting the mail with Microsoft Word and then mashing that into HTML, producing >emails ten times as large as plain text would be and less readable.

Just what we needed! Thank you, oh Guru of Bits! I am changing immediately to sending plain text only, and using >, >>, and so forth to indicate quote and subquotes. What should we do about "may use quoted printable" under "Composing mail"? Will sending plain text prevent the embedding of graphics in the post? Here is a sample ("Knuckles") from grandson Derek when he was in grade school.

Quoted-printable is harmless. It has to do with how it represents non-ASCII characters.

The vertical bars that Eudora sometimes displays for quoted text are really a presentation matter -- if the actual message contains >s to mark quoted text, Eudora displays the vertical bars on the screen. Eudora also does the same when it sees certain ways of indicating quoted text in HTML.

Oh, in Eudora's preferences, in the Styled Text section, you can decide what formatting attributes of incoming mail you want it to render on the screen. I've just turned everything on except Font (so everything shows in my default font) and Small Sizes (so that smaller than normal text displays at my default size). The recent messages that caused problems now look much better, but I'm still only going to send plain text myself.

I don't seem to be able to embed graphics in plain text messages, but I always send graphics as attachments anyway.

[From Bruce Nevin (2007.02.13 12:48 EST)]

"HTML should never be done" is a bit draconian.

I was brought up on the old time religion...

···

--
Richard Kennaway, jrk@cmp.uea.ac.uk, Richard Kennaway
School of Computing Sciences,
University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K.