odd things in e-mails

[John Delacour]

At 09:03 +1100 20/12/07, Scott Jackson wrote:

>A couple of things would help Marshall and others. If people could be
>persuaded to just send plain text messages to the group, with no formatting,
>then all the mark-up code would be removed. Such a request has been made
>many times over the years, but people either through ignorance or arrogance
>refuse to do it.
>
>I know that a lot of software does not make it easy to do these days. I am
>writing this with an old version of MS Outlook, and all that I have to do is
>select Format, Plain Text from the menu.

Every mail program I know for either Mac or Windows allows the user 
to set a preference for plain text.  In Windows mailers the options 
are to be found in Tools->Options.

There is no need for any styling in 99% of the styled mail that 
reaches this list and it is inconsiderate from several points of view 
to post styled messages to a mailing list unless it is necessary -- 
for example if (small) pictures are inserted rather than attached.

Whether or not special styling is specified for a message, the 
message will be sent as styled (HTML) text unless the user's 
preferences/options are set to SEND PLAIN TEXT or warn before sending 
HTML.  Such considerations have been absolutely basic to "netiquette" 
from the earliest days of the Internet, and many lists will refuse to 
process HTML messages or messages with too much quoted text -- 
another plague of this list.

JD