HW : HTML e-mails

Wed Apr 21 05:10:16 EDT 1999

Stephan Spiegel <spiegel at INTPLSRV.NET> writes:

> Help!
>     I keep getting complaints about my "HTML" e-mails.
> Look...I have a NEW computer.  A K6-2 300Mz.
> It has windows 98.  I use Outlook Express for sending
> mail.

I'm not suprised. Most Outlook Express users get
complaints when they first start using that program.
I'll explain why in a moment...

> Only a very few people are complaining about this.

Many people are now so frustrated and annoyed by
the preponderance of HTML-ised e-mail that they
don't bother to complain. It's easier to simply kill-file
the offenders.

> Could someone either tell me what I'm doing wrong,

Yes. By default OE encodes all e-mails inside HTML.
There's no reason to do that as e-mail is meant to
be a plain text format but software manufacturers
like to include *features* simply because they *can*.
Inside the OE address book you can set preferences
for each address that you use which include, amongst
other things, the type of e-mail. Choose plain text
if you are sending to a group of people who may not
be able to read the HTML. This would obviously
include lists such as BOC-L with many readers using
many systems.

> or tell the people that don't get my e-mails "the way
> they like them" to get a new computer!!!

Well I can't handle your HTML. My system simply throws
it away. Maybe I should upgrade? After all the PII 300MHz
box on my desk must be all of 6 months old now. This
has nothing to do with HARDWARE. It's a software problem
and it is your software that is causing it. BTW I use
mostly GNU tools running on a Linux kernel and read e-mail
using the gnus mode of emacs.

> I've gone over all the possible settings in Outlook Express
> and have not seen anything pertaining to "type" of e-mail.

Look again. It's there (but hidden). The great Seattle
Satan would like us all to do things in non-standard ways.

> So again, either help me fix this "problem" or just

So polite! Thank you for asking nicely. In future
RTFM before blaming everyone else.

And in case you wondered (and I bet you hadn't) this is
what you've been sending out...

> ------=_NextPart_000_0018_01BE8B5D.70922D40
> Content-Type: text/html;
>         charset="iso-8859-1"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
> <HTML>
> <HEAD>
>
> <META content=3Dtext/html;charset=3Diso-8859-1 =
> http-equiv=3DContent-Type>
> <META content=3D'"MSHTML 4.72.3110.7"' name=3DGENERATOR>
> </HEAD>
> <BODY bgColor=3D#ffffff>

<snippage of inappropriate encodings>

--
Chris Bates
Lecturer
School of Computing and Management Sciences
Sheffield Hallam University
c.d.bates at shu.ac.uk