Re: open spaces


Subject: Re: open spaces
From: Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 26 2001 - 11:17:42 GMT


On Fri, 26 Jan 2001, Scottie Bowman wrote:

: And if you all care so much about it, why does no one -
: EXCEPT ME - make any attempt to shape their e-mails?
: There's only one other guy I've ever come across (& he
: on the Austen list) who - in sure & certain emulation
: of myself - indents his stuff with the courtesy & fastidiousness
: of a proper writer. [...]

Shaping used to be more popular, but it came under heavy fire back in the
early 90's on the usenet because different reading clients did different
things to hard returns, tabs, and spaces. The result was that while an
email looked quite nice on the sender's screen, it might be a terrible
mess on a reader's screen. I notice that you use hard returns and spaces,
but not tabs, which seems to work quite well. You also appear to be
using Outlook Express, which in ascii mode is usually respectful of
other mail clients' display quirks. But you can never be too sure, and
the safest method is just to wrap your outgoing lines and let your mailer
do the rest.

These days the battle has shifted fields--rightly, I think--and the big
offense is now html-formatted email. Thank God it can easily be undone
before it arrives in your inbox like the Sands Casion in the middle of Ile
de la Cite.

Il n'y a pas de hors texte,

Matt

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Wed Feb 21 2001 - 09:44:22 GMT