Questions for PMMail Tech Support

[Brian Morrison]

On Thu, 14 Sep 2000 07:01:37 -0700, John Bridges wrote:

>On Thu, 14 Sep 2000 14:47:06 +0100, Brian Morrison wrote:
>
>>No, we'd be having a discussion about why PMMail doesn't display
>>correctly when sent HTML generated by Micros~1 (and other) mail
>>clients. 
>
>Maybe some would, but I doubt most of us would participate. There is a huge
>difference between what we have now, and what is defined by the RFC.

PMMail/2 makes no pretence to support that RFC, PMMail 2K I haven't
checked to be honest. I know it can display html mail in some form. 

>
>I can't read most HTML mail I recieve, and it's not complex stuff, basicly
>font changes, colors, links, maybe a few little pictures, that's it.  Of
>course it's worse for the OS/2 users, and I doubt that will change much.
>There is a big difference between something looking "Exactly the same as in
>Outlook", and being readable. Right now we are at the unreadable stage, I
>think most of us would be happy with readable.

I don't receive much HTML mail anyway, anyone that I wish to correspond
with that sends it to me is politely told that it is unwanted and will
they please change their default settings so I don't get it again. This
generally works. Any other html mail is either forwarded to abuse@<ISP>
since it is usually spam or is binned by one of my filters into a 'sin'
folder where I can then decide what action to take. The delete key gets
used most frequently when this happens. I don't have the problem much
in PMMail/2, it strips all the crap and I see what I want to see, good
old ascii just as Ford intended. Sometimes I think it would be better
if it warned me that I was reading stripped HTML so that I could
implement my usual strategy, but even I don't have infinite time to
point these things out to people.

I did subscribe to a Palm mailing list the day before yesterday. The
first mail that arrived was HTML, I looked at it and discovered that
the reply address was not valid, I immediately unsubscribed from the
list and binned the mail. That's how I feel about it, the same way I
feel about 80 column width and sig separators and 4 line sigs and most
other things to do with mail and news. I'd like to see web pages go
back to black courier on a grey background without graphics unless
essential to the subject described (pictures of important stuff). My
comment about Trident missiles and HTML email authors was only part in
jest ;-)

>
>But then, this isn't an issue for you since The Bat has full HTML support....
>(uses the Microsoft DLLs, right?)

I don't use The Bat! at present, I might if there were an OS/2 version
but there isn't.

As you can see, my position on these things is unlikely to shift, I
want to see PMMail work properly with the current feature set rather
than add new features which are by definition impossible to write.

No offence John, I'm just speaking my mind :-) If you think I'm
unreasonable go and look on Deja at posts from Brian Hamilton-Kelly on
any subject, he'll be complaining at you for not lurking on a Usenet
group for six months before posting there.....

-- 
Brian Morrison                                  bdm@fenrir.demon.co.uk
              do you know how far this has gone?
               just how damaged have I become?
                                      'Even Deeper' by Nine Inch Nails