[thelist] html dot syntax

.jeff jeff at members.evolt.org
Tue Jul 31 15:19:07 CDT 2001


brian,

><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> From: Brian King
>
> FYI, it's not just AOL users.
><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><

i have never heard conclusive evidence that there are any other mail clients
that exhibit this problem with html rendering in a message with plain-text
headers.

><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> MS Outlook can also be set up to render HTML in your
> Email.
><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><

more accurately, ms outlook renders any email it encounters with
content-type set to text/html as html.  in this instance you would need to
convert all special characters to their html or numeric character entity
that you wanted to display instead of render (this is done automatically for
you when you write a message in html format and type in characters that need
to be converted).  this is not the case with a message that has a text/plain
content-type.  it is not displayed through the html rendering engine and
therefore does not need to have tags "escaped" (with dots) or special
characters converted.

><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> In short, I think there are more HTML enabled mail
> users out there than you assume.
><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><

not assuming there aren't that many html enabled mail clients.  my
observation is based on experience with various email clients and the broken
nature of the aol mail client.  it should *not* try to render html tags when
the content-type of the message is set to text/plain, yet it does.  that is
fundamentally wrong.  my position is that the majority of the users on a
list like this should not be subjected to the "fix" for a few aol users who
choose to use a service with a broken/standard-defiant mail client.

thanks,

.jeff

http://evolt.org/
jeff at members.evolt.org
http://members.evolt.org/jeff/






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