Re: Plain text formatting

[cld@xxxxxxxx (Carl Distefano)]

Reply to note from Patricia M Godfrey  Sat, 28
Jun 2003 10:17:00 -0400

> no MIME (what does that piece of alphabet soup stand for?

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, an Internet standard
described in RFCs 2045-2049 (that's Requests For Comment, the docs
for the Net). It's actually an extremely clever invention that
embraces far more than HTML. It's a framework for multimedia mail,
with instructions for programmers on how to divide a mail message
into parts (text, formatting, file attachments, photos, background
music, video, etc.) that can be reassembled and played back,
simultaneously or in sequence (by a capable mail program, of
course), at the receiving end. MIME's great strength is also its
weakness: it's so extensible, there's no guaranty that any
particular mail program will be able to handle any particular MIME
message. That's why mailing lists and newsgroups go for the LCD
(that's, uh -- well you know what that is): plain text. No dancing
elephants, but assured compatibility with everyone's mail reader.

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx
http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/