Hello MFPA, On Sunday, June 15, 2014 you wrote:
M> Hi M> On Sunday 15 June 2014 at 2:06:02 PM, in M> <mid:1523432040.20140615080...@charter.net>, Jack S. LaRosa wrote: >> Well personally I like to have the ability to more >> accurately express myself with bold or italics or even >> underline. M> I have that ability in plaintext, via the M> fairly-universally-understood convention of:- M> *bold* M> /italics/ M> _underlined_ M> Or I could emphasise with CAPITALS. M> And all of the above gets through whether the recipient views in M> plaintext or HTML. All the fancy formatting of an HTML message was a M> complete waste of time if the recipient reads it in a plaintext view. M> And even if the recipient views in HTML, their viewing settings may be M> wildly different to your own, so they don't see what you imagine they M> might. >> In my original query I am forced to use >> asterisks to emphasize text which, in my opinion, >> should be italicized. M> I don't see that in any of your messages in this thread. But it does M> the job (and whether to use bold or italics for emphasis is merely a M> stylistic preference). >> I think that if HTML "doesn't >> belong in email" then I have to wonder why the coders >> included it in such a powerful and versatile email >> client like TB!. I'll bet a lot of coding time went >> into including HTML. If you were using MS Word or some >> other word processor or even (cough, cough) **Gmail!**, >> you'd always have those formatting choices available. M> I also wonder why invest so much time and effort into coding your own M> HTML editor rather than writing an API that interpreted the formatting M> of rich text messages composed using a word processor. >> Why should email be denied those options? M> Why *should* these formatting options be available in an email body? M> They seldom add to the message and there is no reasonable expectation M> the recipient sees the same formatting as the sender. M> An email is a message, not a presentation. Anybody wishing to send a M> presentation can attach it to their email, or send a link. All excellent points. I must confess to not knowing that your descriptions of *bold*, /italics/ and _underline_ were commonly accepted methods of expressing those features in plaintext. In my defence (feeble that it is) the bulk of my email correspondence is with people who use Gmail exclusively. I too have a Gmail account which I seldom use because TB! far exceeds Gmail. I used this Gmail account to BCC myself on several HTML messages so that I could see what my recipients were seeing. As I recall the formatting came through ok. I fear that most of my recipients would not understand the asterisks, slashes and underscores if I switched to plaintext for them. So I shall continue to use HTML for those contacts and those contacts only, tolerating the new line jumping to the top of the window. In my dotage it's a comfort to know I can still learn from those more knowledgeable than I. -- Best Regards, Jack LaRosa :usflag: Central Alabama Using The Bat! ver: 5.2. Running Windows 7 Pro ver 6 build 7601 Service Pack 1 ________________________________________________ Current version is 6.1.8 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
