don't like HTML email? here's your fix.

[Trevor Smith]

On Wed, 29 Mar 2000 13:43:30 -0500, Jonathan B. Bayer wrote:

>I disagree.  If you and the receiver are both using non-proportional
>fonts, then the layout will be identical as long as the receiver
>doesn't wrap the lines.

That's what I said. You can't control whether the recipient is using
a non-proportional font. In fact, you can't control whether they have
their message reading window set to 47 characters wide either.

>font.  BUT, if you say in the first line of your message that the user
>needs to use a non-proportional font in order to view the message
>properly, then you at least have a better chance of the message looking
>the same to the receiver as the writer intended it to look.

Sure you have a better chance, but you're not guaranteed anything.
That's what the conversation was about, plain text "guaranteeing"
predictable layout rendering.

In fact, there *should* be some standard for email that has the
sender specify a header line indicating what font is used (or at
least if it's proportional or not) and what line length is used. Then
the receiver's client could respect those settings.

*THAT* would be a standard and *THAT* would guarantee that
standards-compliant clients would all render tihngs in a predictable
way.

Plain text in itself doesn't achieve this.


-- 
 Trevor Smith          |          trevor@haligonian.com
 PGP public key available at: www.haligonian.com/trevor

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