Mail Archives: opendos/2000/09/18/10:28:04
Patrick --
> Hmmmm, I guess you are not able to receive HTML messages. I'll see if there
> is some way to set it to automatically send text only for this particular
> address. I have my mail set up to use a nice looking stationary and the
> server that gets this or the server that receives these messages must
> convert them to text and use attachments for the HTML portions. When I reply
> to a text message, it automatically replies in a text format.
>
> I don't know why some people are having this problem. makes it tough to send
> URL links in text mode. I receive messages in both text and HTML formats. I
> like the HTML ones, because I can simply click on the links. I do not have
> these problems. I get a message in HTML or text, whichever way the author
> sent it. I suspect that some of the people complaining, have a seerver
> somewhere along the line that is converting my messages to MIME format.
>
> I really do not know what I can do on my end. I just write messages in HTML
> format and am not going to change my stationary for a few people that have
> problems with HTML.
I find it amazing that someone who knows so much about the low-level
workings of disk formats and operating systems knows so little about
how the Internet works.
Usenet email and news predate the Internet by a little bit and predate
HTML and the WWW by quite a bit. Usenet was originally implemented as
hosts periodically phoning each other up using the uucp protocol. The
*only* thing they transport is text -- anything else must be converted
to text (e.g., uuencoded) before it can be sent.
The MIME protocol allows the body of a mail or news message to contain
several related but distinct parts. Usually the first part is the ASCII
text message, and the other parts are considered "attachments". Most
of the mail and news clients these days make this process so transparent
that users don't realize what's going on at the actual network level.
For example, when you send "HTML mail" using "stationary", your email
client (not some server) is actually creating a multipart MIME message
that starts with a text-only version of your message, then an HTML
version with markup, the background image of your "stationary" and any
additional images containing logos or letterheads. This is what the rest
of us, using ordinary clients see, and since the first part contains the
useful part of your message, the rest is seen as bandwidth-wasting fluff.
When *you* look at the message, your client is picking apart the multiple
pieces of the message and rendering them the way you expect. I'm sure it
must look very nice to you, but from our perspective, it makes you look
somewhat ignorant, inconsiderate and wasteful.
As far as being able to click on links in text messages, those of us
using Netscape have no problem -- it has the ability to recognize a
fully-specified URL* in a text message and render it as a clickable
link. Evidently you need to do a cut-and-paste in whatever tools
you're using. You might want to search for different tools.
-- Dave Tweed
* fully-specified as in: <protocol>://<host>[:<port>][/path ...]
e.g., http://www.delorie.com/opendos/news.html
- Raw text -