On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 12:04:29AM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote:
The message 200510182340.36448.runlevelten@gmail.com from Ten runlevelten@gmail.com contains these words:
Well each to their own, I say. Can I just say that I'm not sure the empty boxes and spaces a few of us are seeing, are the result of everything being done in a standard manner. :)
You may have a problem that needs sorting.
Could someone *PLEASE* tell me what these empty boxes and spaces are?
I have a suspicion that these are what *YOU* are seeing because sometimes, Ten's messages are dotted with formatting, ZIMACS is quoting it, and your (selective collective 'your') readers are reinterpreting the codes.
The trouble is that I /don't/ actually see any problems with Tens emails, but I do have a problem with some of Anthonys.
In the original message in the *original* thread (sorry about the swearing) I saw one line as
----------------------------------- US SCSI card and 2 \327 UW SCSI HDs -----------------------------------
(I.E. in mutt on a fairly plain install of Debian Sarge, after the number 2 I see a space followed by a backslash followed by the numbers 327)
I have also seen this in a few other emails from Anthony, I always knew it was something to do with encoding fu but not what. The reason I asked yesterday about "standards" is that I want to know what my mail client/OS/mail system/intermediate mail system/other peoples mailers etc. are doing.
I don't know who has a broken mailer/mail system/etc. etc. and to be brutally honest I *don't* actually care about other peoples mail systems and broken mailers /too/ much but I want to know that mine is OK. (oh, and btw it appears to do some stuff really well (I know not what), as I now get pretty spam from China, Russia and other far-east nations with some wicked characters which display really nicely for me in what I can only assume is the correct font).
In my defense about not actually knowing much about encoding types and how they relate to email I just have to say that it has always "just-worked" and I have never found any real limitation or had any complaints about the way my mail is sent/received with regard to encoding.
I *really* think that a talk about email encoding/standards/whatever could be really good for an Alug meet, but only if the person giving it has done the research and has a copy of the relevant RFCs etc. etc. on hand to back up their research ;)
Thanks Adam