Russ sent his response before I was finished with mine, but looks like mine is still useful, so I'm sending it.
On Sat, 23 Jul 2005, Contestcen@aol.com wrote:
I would encourage that, but please don't just dump HTML messages, bounce them with the specific reason. That might improve the breed.
I looked at some of my emails to this mailing list, and I found the following HTML tags: a few standard tags at the front to establish that it was an HTML message, and to start the body. A BR tag at the end of each line in the body of the text, and some DIV tags where I skipped lines.
Then I looked at your email, this one where you complained that I was using HTML. I found the following HTML tags: a few standard tags at the front to establish that it was an HTML message, and to start the body. A BR tag at the end of each line in the body of the text. The only difference was that there were no DIV tags. However, there was still pretty much one tag for every line in the file.
I checked Frank's response and his messages are indeed plain text. Yours appear to be sent in the form of two attachments: one plain text and the other HTML. This is now commonplace, but it does make things awkward if one is using a mailer that doesn't support MIME. Here is how Pine (what I use) shows the table of contents of your most recent message:
Parts/Attachments: 1 OK 43 lines Text 2 Shown ~53 lines Text ----------------------------------------
If I look at your message with headers exposed, I see your message as a non MIME-compliant mailer would and it isn't pretty. Here are portions:
Here is the beginning of the first attachment:
-------------------------------1122104170 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
I would encourage that, but please don't just dump HTML messages, bounce them with the specific reason. That might improve the breed.
I looked at some of my emails to this mailing list, and I found the following HTML tags: a few standard tags at the front to establish that it was an HTML message, and to start the body. A BR tag at the end of each line in the body of the text, and some DIV tags where I skipped lines.
And here is the beginning of the second:
-------------------------------1122104170 Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
<HTML><HEAD> <META charset=3DUS-ASCII http-equiv=3DContent-Type content=3D"text/html; cha= rset=3DUS-ASCII"> <META content=3D"MSHTML 6.00.2900.2668" name=3DGENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY style=3D"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #fffff= f"> <DIV>> I would encourage that, but please don't just dump HTML messages,<= BR>> bounce them with the specific reason. That might improve the<B= R>> breed.<BR></DIV> <DIV> </DIV>
While the most commonly used mailers all support MIME, many people still use ones that don't (I used to until I started getting so many MIME messages I had to switch), which is why the GPC maintainers have the plain-text only rule. You might see if AOL tech support can help you figure out how to send plain text messages, but if they can't, that might be a good reason to either use your own e-mail client or switch providers. I've never used AOL, so I'm no help.
Back to lurking...
--------------------------| John L. Ries | Salford Systems | Phone: (619)543-8880 x107 | or (435)865-5723 | --------------------------|
with both plain text and HTML versions included, which is common. Don't know what AOL does with plain text messages, but it is likely that it makes some attempt at rendering them as HTML.
--------------------------| John L. Ries | Salford Systems | Phone: (619)543-8880 x107 | or (435)865-5723 | --------------------------|
In this forum, people apparently prefer > signs at the start of each line of quoted text. In fact, some people insist on that. You might not realize this, but those line divisions are achieved by using BR tags.
As far as I can see, roughly the same amount of HTML is generated in your emails as in my emails. I can make it exactly equal by not skipping any lines. Would you prefer that? Would it be easier for you if my answers were always in a solid block of text without any blank lines separating paragraphs?
Let me give that a test. Here is my answer repeated without the blank lines: I looked at some of my emails to this mailing list, and I found the following HTML tags: a few standard tags at the front to establish that it was an HTML message, and to start the body. A BR tag at the end of each line in the body of the text, and some DIV tags where I skipped lines. Then I looked at your email, this one where you complained that I was using HTML. I found the following HTML tags: a few standard tags at the front to establish that it was an HTML message, and to start the body. A BR tag at the end of each line in the body of the text. The only difference was that there were no DIV tags. However, there was still pretty much one tag for every line in the file. In this forum, people apparently prefer > signs at the start of each line of quoted text. In fact, some people insist on that. You might not realize this, but those line divisions are achieved by using BR tags. As far as I can see, roughly the same amount of HTML is generated in your emails as in my emails. I can make it exactly equal by not skipping any lines. Would you prefer that? Would it be easier for you if my answers were always in a solid block of text without any blank lines separating paragraphs?