Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 20:04:57 -0500 From: Brian Sobolak <brian@planetshwoop.com> To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Broken mail Message-ID: <41254E39.508@planetshwoop.com> In-Reply-To: <20040820004055.GC85432@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <seeai01okg2r9ae1onkm9pgtk7687orlu4@4ax.com> <20040820004055.GC85432@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > On Friday, 20 August 2004 at 0:57:26 +0100, John Murphy wrote: >>Never used Outlook or Outlook Express myself but I get the >>impression that what they see is NOT what they send. > > > I used to think that too, for the obvious reason that you can't > understand why anybody would send such a broken message. Since then, > I've come to the realization that yes, indeed, a very large number of > people *do* send obviously broken text. The main reason seems to be > that it's just too difficult to get right. This is totally true. Outlook on the PC absolutely can't deal with line breaks appropriately. It was the single most frustrating thing about it. That was, of course, until I had to use Lotus Notes as my MUA again. Makes Outlook appear like a dream. > I'm sure that it's possible to configure "Outlook" to be less stupid. > But how many people do that? The single biggest prevention is simply habit. I find there is an equal number of people who try to configure Outlook to appear normal vs those who configure it to look horrendous, ie Christmas wallpaper in the background or Comic Sans fonts. > I've looked through my "Outlook" inbox for other examples. What I > can't find is an easily legible message. Even when there is no > obvious breakage, I find messages sent with "Outlook" or other > Microsoft-based MUAs to be very difficult to read. > Actually, interestingly enough, there is significant differences btwn the PC and Mac versions of Outlook (the mac version is called Entourage). It displays less breakage with common mail etiquette than Outlook for the PC - it gets the line returns right, is less likely to send RTF, etc. And again I'll say: anything Outlook does poorly, Lotus can do worse. You'd struggle to find a worse MUA. brian
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