Re: WHAT THE F**K!!! (Was: Re: Looking for right ISP)
Paul McHale wrote:
> Steve,
>
> I agree that I am using MS Outlook. I think it is the best program available for
> my use. I don't understand your difficulty. I forwarded the message to my linux
> server and opened it with mutt. It came across in plain text. I double checked
> the outlook transmit message settings and they are set to plain text !
>
> Is anyone else noticing this problem of my message posting in HTML ???
There are two problems with MS Outlook, one regarding "breaking the thread" (which
I'll return to in a moment), one regarding non-standard HTML. On non-standard HTML,
Outlook uses nonstandard font size tags which look like "<font size=3D12>" presumably
because it is mixing standards. In one standard (I don't know which), = is a special
character used for end-of-line and otherwise as an escape character, so representing
= requires =3D (since 3D is hex for the ASCII of =). The other standard is HTML.
This font size tag, a mixture of the two, is bad HTML, and in Netscape Mail it causes
the HTML text to be rendered in the smallest font available! Hence it is really
annoying to us Netscape Mail users, and probably other HTML and (perhaps) rich text
clients.
Outlook also is filled with all kinds of superfluous <DIV> and <SPAN> and <FONT>
tags, which make it very difficult to edit when quoting in Netscape. NS uses very
few formatting commands, so the reader client's preferences in font face, size,
color, etc. are respected unless deliberately overridden by the author. I've found
it to be as lean as if I were writing the HTML myself. But others have disagreed
with me about Netscape editor, so I'll stop there.
Outlook also defaults to sending email in both plain text and HTML, so emails are
twice as big as they should be. Netscape defaults to plain text (even if you compose
in the HTML editor) unless there are HTML features like tables, images, bulleted
lists, etc, in which case it asks the user whether to send in plain text, HTML or
both. A much more intelligent default IMHO.
But you're right, Outlook can be made to send in plain text, and your (Paul) emails
have been good about this. Daniel's first post was in both plain text and HTML, so
it was ugly in Netscape, and twice as big as it needed to be. Many other posts to
this list have this problem.
> As far as breaking the thread, what are refering to?
Netscape mail from the beginning borrowed a convention from newsgroups such that a
reply gives the message ID of the original message, and all previous references as
well. This allows Debian's archiving system (and other email clients who recieve the
message) to thread the messages very nicely, so one can tell which messages are in
reply to which others in a thread, ordering by reply rather than by date. Many other
clients seem to have adopted this as well. (Actually, I'm not sure whether NS
started this, it's so widespread that it's probably not just NS-originated.)
Clients which don't use this convention cannot be properly thread in email clients or
in the Debian archives.
> Quoting the wrong way. Feel free to expand on this one ...
I'm not sure what this is referring to.
So, lots of reasons not to use Outlook. I'm curious, why do you find it to be the
best available? What does it offer that, say, Netscape can't do with a good IMAP
server?
Zeen,
-Adam P.
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