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Re: [APD] Netiquette



I had a nice discussion about this with some folks at
Novell, Wordperfect, and a few other manufacturers of
Internet capable messaging/emailing products a few years
ago. I don't have the bible and verse in front of me,
although I probably do have it in the files at home. You
can check the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
standards and find it.

The basic idea is that an authoring program doesn't know
what browser, editor, viewer, will be used to view a
document nor how any particular instance of a browser,
editor, or viewer is set up. Will it be set up for 50
characters per line, 65, 75? When an authoring program
imposes wraps within a paragraph, things can start looking
pretty goofy, depending on the display program. But if the
displaying program handles the wraps wihtin paragraphs to
fit the local set up, then it works out right every time --
provided that the displaying program is following the
long-published stadardds. Thus, the "displaying" program is
supposed to handle the word wrap within paragraphs. 

It makes terrific sense, especially if you're trying to
design an authoring program and figure out how to have mail
display correctly on goodness knows whose machine with
goodness knows what brand of software with goodness knows
what particular local settings.

Hope that helps,
Scott H.

--- Stuart Halliday <stuart at stuarthalliday_com> wrote:

> S. Hieber wrote:
> > Cut and paste into notepad. You get instant
> wrap-o-rama.
> > 
> > According to the standards, the displayer is supposed
> to
> > handle the wrapping, not the editor producing the
> original
> > file. 
> 
> It is?
> 
> Since when?
> 
> In the good old days (1990s) of USENET and BBS's (yes
> this was before 
> 'the Internet'), we had to ensure our emails were wrapped
> at 72-76 
> characters. This was due to the display device having a
> 80 character 
> width and we had to leave a few characters spare for
> quoting.
> 
> We were often expected to be Netiquette aware.
> 
> But with the advent of HTML in emails and crappy software
> like Outlook 
> Express people just use whatever the email program is set
> to.
> 
> We may have came a long way since the awful software we
> had to put up 
> with in the nineties. But there are still very badly made
> email programs 
> around which allow the non-HTML part of an email not to
> be wrapped at 
> the correct width of 72-76.
> 
> Another big factor I think, is that in the old days the
> kind of person 
> that was online was by necessity very technical. So they
> understood the 
> reasons behind Netiquette.
> 
> Not so these days. When a person gets online these days
> they are no 
> longer told the basic rules of Netiquette. Shame.
> 
> It's a bit like writing a letter, we were all taught how
> to write 
> correctly and we all cringe when we get a letter badly
> spelt or with 
> awful syntax.
> 
> Personally I think, why should email be any different?
> 
> P.S.
> Don't get me started on ppl that top post or refuse to
> snip quotes! ;-)
> 
> -- 
> Stuart Halliday
> Ancient IT Engineer
> _______________________________________________
> Aquatic-Plants mailing list
> Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
> http://www.actwin.com/mailman/listinfo/aquatic-plants
> 

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