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hi all as i said in my last post re grey backgrounds: >next on my agenda: >mail volume in terms of 'multi-part messages' >load up your e-mail software now! but first, a little ascii background: the internet lives and breathes "plain text" aka "ascii" which has no countem no bells and whistles in terms of font styles, colours, formatting, tabs, etc Hyper Text Markup Language aka HTML is essentially "plain" text souped up a little with instructions like these <P> <TABLE> to give a little more formatting control over "plain text" specifically for use in the World Wide Web which is the newest branch of the much older and much bigger Internet the magic of ascii and html imho is that documents written in them can be read by any computing machine and any computing software ibm, pc, apple, mac, unix, ms word, eudora, pegasus, wordperfect, lynx, juno, etc etc which makes for barrier-free communication across "computing platforms" and across the world as one who graduated [?] from apple's lisa to mac [no compatibility] and from mac to pc [no compatibility] and from dos to windows 3.1 [ahem] and who has stubbornly resisted stepping off into the win95/98 quicksand i find that this "cross platform" concept has irresistible appeal however, in their questionable wisdom, the manufacturers of the latest and greatest [?] e-mail software programs in particular microsoft inc [grr] have adopted 'Rich Text Format' and 'Stationery' options as bells and whistles with more sales appeal than 'boring' old plain text to the detriment of the barrier-free communication mentioned above with the aim of making our communication with each other as free of barriers as humanly and technologically possible i urge all of us to check our e-mail software settings: under 'preferences' or 'tools' or 'setup' or 'options' or 'configuration' ensure that the following choices are selected: plain ascii text no colours no attachments no html no other text or word-processing format style no multi-part messages this last option can really add to our mail volume totally unnecessariy [no grey area snake oil or pigs here!] "multi-part" messages are sent out in every format going e.g. plain text, html, as an attachment, even as a graphics image the receiver might see coding like the following: ----------------------------------------------------------------- >This is a multi-part message in MIME format. > >------=_NextPart_000_0052_01BED0A3.01143220 >Content-Type: multipart/alternative; > boundary="----=_NextPart_001_0053_01BED0A3.01143220" > > >------=_NextPart_001_0053_01BED0A3.01143220 >Content-Type: text/plain; > charset="iso-8859-1" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > this is where the one line message resided in plain text format > >------=_NextPart_001_0053_01BED0A3.01143220 >Content-Type: text/html; > charset="iso-8859-1" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > ><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> ><HTML><HEAD> ><META content=3D"text/html; charset=3Diso-8859-1" =... etc etc and this is where the one line message resided in html format >------=_NextPart_001_0053_01BED0A3.01143220-- > >------=_NextPart_000_0052_01BED0A3.01143220 >Content-Type: image/gif; > name="Chess.gif" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 >Content-ID: <005101bed0dd$ad5aa020$32759cd1@erv> > >R0lGODlhQAZlAPcAAP////7+/v39/fz8/Pv7+/r6+vn5+fj4+Pf39/b29vX19fT09PPz8/Ly8vHx >8fDw8O/v7+7u7u3t7ezs7Ovr6+rq6unp6ejo6Ofn5+bm5uXl5ePj4+Li4uHh4eDg4N/f397e3t3d >3dzc3Nvb29ra2tnZ2djY2NfX19... etc etc and this is where the one line message resided in gif [graphics] format >------=_NextPart_000_0052_01BED0A3.01143220-- ----------------------------------------------------------------- as a result this one line message ballooned to 8k in size which meant that 7.9k of unnecessary gobbledeegook was sent to each of our 1800 members as well as into our archives i am not tossing blame around at anyone [save maybe ms inc.] i'm pointing all this out in the hope that we can become e-mailer pros i have suspected for some time that this 'multi-part' error might simply be due to two kinds of 'not-knowing' : 1. not-knowing what our e-mail software is capable of and 2. not-knowing what our posted messages look like to the others item number 1 may be tackled through this and other explanatory or how-to messages item number 2 may be tackled by having our parkinsn subscription options set to REPRO, which means you are sent a copy of your own message as posted so i tackled item 2 myself by waving my list-mom-wand over the list and setting all of us to REPRO [which some of our sharper listmembers have noticed!] this option can be changed back to NOREPRO again at anytime on an individual basis [personally, i prefer REPRO, and it is recommended by LISTSERV if your subscription is also set to send out NOACKnowledgement of messages successfully posted to the list] whew that's enough LISTSRRV nrrdette talk for this week! janet janet paterson 52 now / 41 dx / 37 onset snail-mail: PO Box 171 Almonte Ontario K0A 1A0 Canada website: a new voice <http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Village/6263/> e-mail: <[log in to unmask]>