[Robotgroup] Didn't mean to send that last message -- the little envelope icon is too close to the little floppy icon

[Vern Graner]

Betty wrote:
> and what is up with the plain text (?) formatting?

The Robot Group mailing list accepts ASCII text as a means of sending
and receiving written words. It is universal in that it can be read and
displayed by mail programs on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, Amiga,
Commodore 64 computers etc. HTML is designed for web pages so it also is
not accepted by the mailing list.

Many people subscribe to the list using low speed (dial up) lines and/or
text based mail readers (i.e. PINE or ELM) so small sized messages in a
universally readable format is useful and courteous for all members.

> The only way I could
> read it was to copy it into word. So sorry.

If the text to which you are referring to is Glenn's post, I had no
trouble reading it as it was word wrapped by my mail reader.  Most email
programs will automatically "word wrap" at ~72 chars by default. What
were you using to read the message that did not wrap the lines for you?
Just curious.. :)

FWIW, you could have probably have used "notepad" as it has a "word
wrap" feature and it loads considerably faster than WORD. :)

<digress>
"Word" is not a standard for message exchanges, though many people use
WORD formated documents as if it is a standard. Read here for some good
info:

http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html

A more universal choice that reduces your costs (i.e. purchase price)
and liability (i.e. fines for "pirating" if you can't *prove* you have a
legitimate license for a copy during an audit) is to try out Open Office:

http://www.openoffice.org

I composed both of the articles I've had published (Nuts and Volts) thus
far using Open Office writer and have them all saved in non-proprietary
document formats.

I am vehemently anti-proprietary formats as I've seen first-hand the
results. Back in the 80's I worked for Emerald Airlines and all their
flight manuals had to be manually re-typed into a new word processing
system from paper copies since the "Lexitron" word processor:

http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/LexitronVT1303.htm

in which all the original work had been done, used a proprietary disk
format that NOTHING but a Lexitron could read! When out last machine
died, we were effectively cut off from our own documents! The most cost
effective method to get our data back was to retype them as Lexitron
wanted something like $10/page to convert the docs to ASCII.
</digress>

> What should I compose messages
> in so that they won't come out with funny line breaks or just be one long
> straight line?

I use Mozilla Thunderbird as my email reader of choice. You could use
Eudora, or outlook express if you have either of them, but I really like
Thunderbird. Its also free open source:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

> I'll be quiet now.

Please don't! :) Having discussions is healthy, helpful and welcome. :)

Vern

-- 
Vern Graner CNE/CNA/SSE    | "If the network is down, then you're
Senior Systems Engineer    | obviously incompetent so why are we
Texas Information Services | paying you? Of course, if the network
http://www.txis.com        | is up, then we obviously don't need
Austin Office 512 328-8947 | you, so why are we paying you?" ©VLG