Fwd: gas prices

Sat, 03 Jul 1999 00:55:36 -0700 (PDT)

==================BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE==================
<snip>
>X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 4.5 (0410)
>Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1999 20:34:57 -0700
<snip>
Mime-version: 1.0

> THIS MESSAGE IS IN MIME FORMAT. Since your mail reader does not understand
this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.
>
>--MS_Mac_OE_3013792498_320939_MIME_Part
>Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
>
>We are so lucky

<snip>

>--MS_Mac_OE_3013792498_320939_MIME_Part
>Content-type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"
>Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable
>
><HTML>
><HEAD>
><TITLE>gas prices</TITLE>
></HEAD>
><BODY BGCOLOR=3D"#FFFFFF">
><TT>We are so lucky<BR>
><BR>
===================END FORWARDED MESSAGE===================

I just received (in PMMail/2) the message whose beginning is duplicated
above. I've snipped out irrelevant parts of the header as well as most
of the message body.

I'm sure that the preface about my mail program's not understanding
MIME was not typed in by the sender, but was inserted automatically by
the sender's mail software (apparently Outlook Express for the Mac) and
was designed to be invisible if my mail client displayed HTML
formatting.

I fired back a rather snotty reply to the effect that my mail program
was, in fact, *fully* conversant with MIME and that the problem, which
had nothing to do with MIME, was that the sender's message contained
HTML code (which it obviously does) and that I choose not to use a mail
program that displays HTML or RTF formatting.

I was telling the truth, right? Why would Outlook Express for the Mac
start off a message by telling me that my mail client was
MIME-ignorant?

-- 
"Paul Wiener" <paulish@paulish.com>