tuner problems

Werner Almesberger werner at almesberger.net
Thu Jun 9 00:53:27 EDT 2011


Ron K. Jeffries wrote:
> Werner says your messages
> are a jumbled mess in his mail program.

Well, my purpose in bringing this up in the chat wasn't to start
any public shaming, but rather to satisfy a sense of curiosity
regarding how many people would politely be quiet instead of
mentioning that elephant in the middle of the room (or the king's
clothes, pick you meme :)

> You might or might not already know that people
> who dislike HTML email *really* dislike
> HTML email.

We particularly dislike HTML-only mails. What Jane is sending is
an interesting combination, though: it's HTML mail that may have
the kind of markup that makes it readable in a Web browser, but it
is also accompanied by an unsuccessful attempt to render the same
text in plain ASCII.

What the result looks like is the whole body of the mail being
collapsed into a single line (including any text being replied to
that was originally properly formatted), with Jane's own reply
interspersed in an almost undetectable way. "Almost", because you
can sometimes figure it out by reading the whole thing and
noticing a change in style, or looking at the mail she replied to,
and mentally subtracting the original message from the result. I'm
sure a lot gets missed in the process, and us ASCII users probably
often decide that it's just not worth the effort.

Now, we could just dismiss this as incompetence or ineptitude, but
I don't think it would be entirely fair to hold Jane to such low
standards.

- Werner




More information about the discussion mailing list


interactive