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I seem to need a bit of advice, please, about email message formatting.
There are some things I am failing to understand.

My messages are always sent and returned as simple emails. I seldom visit
the "message board".

Years ago, when I used a Mac, with Eudora, I didn't ask it to wrap the
length of sent lines; just allowed paragraphs to be transmitted as a long
stream of characters, to which  return character would be applied by the
receiving end as it thought fit. This seemed to satisfy everyone.

When I switched to a PC, and Outlook Express, this appeared to impose a
maximum length of sent lines, to 132 characters, for some reason. When sent
with such a limit, this presented no difficulties at my end. My own
messages, reflected back to me, fitted into the available line length. But
others protested that it gave rise to problems if they wanted to quote or
edit that content. Without really understanding why, I then limited the
maximum line length, as sent, to 72 characters, about half as many as my
screen display would conveniently allow, and that seemed to keep everyone
happy. "Like poetry", was how Alex Eremenko described it.

That's the situation that prevailed until a few days ago.

I have no particular wish to be writing poetry, and half-filled screens,
and printed pages, seem to me an unnecessary waste of space. Emails from
the postings of others seem to happily spread across and fit my screen
display, so presumably lack any "hard return" characters, so why couldn't
mine?. So, as a few days ago I wished to send an email (not to this list)
containing tabular stuff that really called for longer line lengths, I
increased the line length that Outlook Express can send to the maximum
allowed, 132 characters. And then left it at that. Since then, my own
emails have been reflected back to me, comfortably filling my screen, and
no longer looking  like a newspaper column.

But now, I've just been informed, off-list,  by another regular Navlist
poster, that this changed format gives him serious problems. I thank him
for this useful information. His messages arrive to him via Internet
Explorer 8, and he tells me that this message, recently sent-
http://www.fer3.com/arc/m2.aspx?i=112402&y=201003 ,
has become particularly garbled. Most of it has run right off the
screen-edge to the right (which doesn't seem to happen when I view it with
IE7), also this and other messages suffer from showing alternate
short-lines and long-lines (which I can see clearly when I look at that
link with IE7).

But even when I look into that posting, I can see that although nearly all
lines are truncated at about 80  characters, curiously just one line, in
quoted text near the end, seems to have an extra 15 or so characters. How
does that happen?

It seems to me that the short-lines, long-lines problem occurs because
messages transmitted from the message board via Internet Explorer have, at
some point, a return character inserted into them, wrapping after 80
characters or so, which, in addition to the hard end-of-line sent out by me
after 132 characters, produces that alternating pattern of long and short
lines. What's the origin of that imposed return, and why is it set at that
value? Is it within IE at my end, and can I alter it? Is there any general
guidance could be offered to Navlist members who post via email, about the
formatting of their messages?

For now, I hope to have got around the problem by wrapping line lengths at
75 characters, and will resend the offending message in that format. If
readers have found any other of my recent messages to be impenetrable in
that way, please say, and I'll resend.

George.

contact George Huxtable, at  george@hux.me.uk
or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.

   

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