6 Jan
1999
6 Jan
'99
1:10 p.m.
On Jan 6, 18:33, Barry A. Watzman wrote:
Subject: Message formats
[ plain text
Encoded with "quoted-printable" ] :
I am NOT sending in HTML format,
but it is MIME encoded. Sorry, but I use
my E-Mail client (Windows messaging) for more than just this discussion
group, and I need the ability to send and receive formatted text for some
of them, including my employer. I'm not going to change formats on a
message-by-message basis just to eliminate the equals signs at the ends of
the lines.
No, it's not just MIME-encoded. We're not complaining about equals signs
at the ends of lines (which, incidentally, arise because Microsoft don't
understand MIME). Apart from this message, all the ones I've seen from you
have been encoded as "multipart/alternative". The few I've bothered to
read (because it IS a bother) have contained a copy in some other format as
well as the plain text.
And as you can see from the way my mailer has quoted your message, the
lines aren't split except at paragraph breaks. You need to get a mailer
that works :-)
"Windows messaging"? Do you mean Microsoft Mail? Or something like
Outlook? I can assure you that it is possible to configure Microsoft
mailers to send formatted HTML (which IMHO should not be allowed at all) or
RTF in such a way that normal mailers simply see a plain text plus an
attachment.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
6 Jan
6 Jan
2:10 p.m.
And while we're at it, why don't we complain about a single '.' on a
line,
or starting
a line with "From" :-)
Ok, ok, so if you're using your Classic computers to read mail then I guess
we should also switch to ALL UPPER CASE SO THAT TELETYPE OWNERS WON'T FEEL
LEFT OUT.
Sheesh. Plain text really sucks. Y'all prefer that someone type _like this_
to indicate a piece of underlined text? or my habit *bolding* with
asterisks? This message "encoded" with HTML is roughly 5% larger than it is
in plain text. Wow, now that's a waste of resources.
Sure, sure, some of you actually enjoy typing in ASCII art to illustrate
something, I don't. Stick in a darn diagram.
Do you have a telephone in your house or a telegraph (and if you have a
telegraph do you force everyone to "call you" on it rather than the telephone?)
Here is my advice, you (the folks whining that they can only read plain
text messages) have got between 6 and 18 months before you will be deleting
everything because its encoded in some more descriptive form. If you can't
figure out a way to read that kind of mail by then you will see less and
less of the internet mail traffic (this list excepted of course.) Then your
kids will come in one day, after you've not read their mail because it was
not plain text, and shake their heads exactly as I did when I could not
convince my father to replace his "trusty" black and white TV until we were
waaaay into the color generation.
ObClassicCmp: I've got a "rare" Zenith green screen monitor that was used
with an Apple II, it even has the "wide/narrow" switch on the back so that
you can make 40 column mode more readable. Let me know if you want it...
--Chuck
2:23 p.m.
On Wed, 6 Jan 1999, Chuck McManis wrote:
Ok, ok, so if you're using your Classic computers
to read mail then I guess
we should also switch to ALL UPPER CASE SO THAT TELETYPE OWNERS WON'T FEEL
LEFT OUT.
No, the software handles the conversion for that fine a la Unix.
Sheesh. Plain text really sucks. Y'all prefer that
someone type _like this_
to indicate a piece of underlined text? or my habit *bolding* with
asterisks? This message "encoded" with HTML is roughly 5% larger than it is
in plain text. Wow, now that's a waste of resources.
5% overhead for zero content enhancement? You want to put us on a
slippery slope, and pretty soon you'll start spewing GIF's at us.
Sure, sure, some of you actually enjoy typing in ASCII
art to illustrate
something, I don't. Stick in a darn diagram.
See, I told you!
Do you have a telephone in your house or a telegraph
(and if you have a
telegraph do you force everyone to "call you" on it rather than the
telephone?)
But those things went over different channels! If you want to spew GIF's
at me over a differnt IP port, fine -- I'll put my HTML and GIF munger on
that port, but keep the stuff away from the SMTP port, will ya!?
-- Doug
2:35 p.m.
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4:14 p.m.
Sheesh. Plain text really sucks. Y'all prefer that
someone type _like this_
to indicate a piece of underlined text? or my habit *bolding* with
Yes, I prefer this.
asterisks? This message "encoded" with HTML
is roughly 5% larger than it is
in plain text. Wow, now that's a waste of resources.
How typically American, why is it that the general American public thinks
that the rest of the world has the same level of access as they do? Many
of the members of the list have to pay for their connect time by the
minute, they don't need that extra amount, and Microsoft spews a lot more
than 5%, if they did it properly it wouldn't add a lot, but with their
crappy programming it's more like 20%.
Sure, sure, some of you actually enjoy typing in ASCII
art to illustrate
something, I don't. Stick in a darn diagram.
No, I don't enjoy typing in ASCII art, the best method to do it in this day
and age would be to either post it on a web page, and put the URL in the
message and let those that want to access it. If you don't have a web
page, simply tell people in the message that you can send a diagram upon
request.
Do you have a telephone in your house or a telegraph
(and if you have a
Both, doesn't everyone?
Here is my advice, you (the folks whining that they can
only read plain
text messages) have got between 6 and 18 months before you will be deleting
everything because its encoded in some more descriptive form. If you can't
Again, how typically American! I'm starting to hate American's to the
point I'm looking for another country to move to, since I'm embarrased to
say that I'm an American myself. Anyone know any good countries that I can
move to, and not be embarassed to be associated with? The Internet is not
an American only thing!
I'd like to point out a few things, my reaction to a message that was about
%30 HTML caused this thread to spring into being. I'm using a e-mail
client that can handle it without any problem, I've also got a dedicated
384k line, so bandwidth isn't a problem for me. Therefore I can handle a
nice rich document, BUT I've also got the manners not to force them onto
others! You will find that people on other lists will consider such
behavior rude also.
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
7 Jan
7 Jan
4:40 a.m.
Zane H. Healy said...
|
|How typically American, why is it that the general American public thinks
How typically whatever.
There's no reason to start country-bashing. Plenty of
people in the USA (North America alone includes Canada
and Mexico, but I suspect you didn't mean them) don't
have this attitude.
I work for an international company (owned by Belgians).
I have to fight people in Belgium and England over this
issue, too. And I'm the one pushing for plain text.
Of course, I'm a Texan, and one could contend that it's
a different country. 8^)
-Miles
6 Jan
6 Jan
4:25 p.m.
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7 Jan
7 Jan
9:56 a.m.
From: "Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner"
<spc(a)armigeron.com>
You can't really blame Eric Allman and sendmail for that -- the mbox
format was already established years before sendmail (or RFC822) was
written. And it *was* a reasonable format in the early versions of Unix,
when the mail command just printed out the entire mail file rather than
having commands to deal with individual messages. It should have been
fixed in version 7, but it wasn't, so we're still stuck with it.
Even so, it's not sendmail that does the quoting, unless you specifically
configure it to do so. My mail all goes through sendmail, but since it
goes directly (via procmail) into MH-format folders, lines beginning
with From make it through without getting mangled.
And while we're at it, why don't we
complain about a single '.' on a line,
or starting a line with "From" :-)
You can thank Eric Allman for those blunders. RFC822 specifically state
that the SMTP server is to NOT modify the email as it goes through (as long
as it conforms to the standard US 7-bit ASCII character set. Anything
outside of the 7-bit ASCII character set is implementation dependant and
anything goes). But in order to remain compatible with existing Unix
software, lines starting with 'From ' had to be ``quoted'' else mail
reading
agents would get horribly confused (why they stored email in a single file is
anybody's guess. I assume
because early Unix systems couldn't deal with dozens or hundreds of
files in a directory).
I imagine it was for efficiency of storage, assuming it had occurred
to anyone to even try delivering mail to multiple files. When you have
small disks and lots of users, you don't want to waste an inode and
an average of half a block of disk space on every single message.
Eric (not Allman)
9369
days inactive
9370
days old
7 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cmcmanis＠freegate.com -
eric＠fudge.uchicago.edu -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
meo＠netads.com -
pete＠dunnington.u-net.com -
spc＠armigeron.com -
yowza＠yowza.com