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>>> Posting number 71168
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 12:43:18 -0500
From: janet paterson <[log in to unmask]>
Subj: LIST: Re: Duplicates - E-mail Formats - Plain/Text Vs Multipart/Mixed

hi all

...

>>i don't have MSExchange
>>but somewhere in its settings for
>>preferences or options or user set-up or configuration...
>>there is a setting for "Content-Type:"
>>make sure that "multipart/mixed" is not selected
>>and that
>>"text/plain" is the only option selected

...

So, somewhere in between sending your first message and your second message to me yesterday, your e-mail software settings got changed from this:

>Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
>       boundary="----_=_NextPart_000_01BF26EE.C75CADF8"

to this:

>Content-Type: text/plain

which very likely has been behind the 'duplicates problem' all along.

MS Exchange may refer to "Content-Type:" in different terms; but this is a critical setting in instructing the mail server machines as to the formatting of your messages.

"Multipart/Mixed" refers to new-ish options available for sending messages in formats other than "Plain/Text", i.e. in HTML format for viewing as a WWWeb document, and in another image format [possibly GIF] for viewing as a graphics document.

Sending E-mail in formats other than "Plain/Text" is a badly conceived idea, in my humble opinion - doing so contradicts all the internet conventions and standards which established the universal accessibility of this miraculous medium in the first place.

"Multipart/Mixed E-mail" strikes me as an OxyMoron of the most Moronic type.

If Microsoft [my suspicion] conceived of this concept, well, all I can say is, "It figures."

The "boring" Plain/Text format [no fancy fonts, no fancy colours, no fancy graphics] of internet communication forms the backbone and structure of the net.

"All you get" are the words, but the words get to all.

Maybe that's what Marshall McLuhan [a former Professor of English at the University of Toronto!] meant when he said, "The medium is the message."

And now I say, "Mixing the medium is a mess."


janet
on a rant

janet paterson
52 now / 41 dx / 37 onset
a new voice: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/
613 256 8340 PO Box 171 Almonte Ontario Canada K0A 1A0