Fw: [Aslml] The Death of ASLOK

[Bruce Probst]

On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 08:23:26 -0500 (GMT-05:00), swfancher at mindspring.com
wrote:

>This message comes through with symbols (squares) instead of apostrophes.  Am I special,
>or is thie one of those cases where if you use HTML-rich text or something like that, that
>anyone not viewing in that format will get a mess?

Steve appears to be have been using "smart quotes", where the default ASCII
"straight quotes" are replaced by angled ones.  This would be a "feature" of
whatever software he uses to compose his e-mail.  Your e-mail software has
to be able to cope with the extended ASCII codes thus used to view them
properly.  It has nothing to do with HTML.

Steve's message was posted as "Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1;
format=flowed".  The "charset" is the important bit -- that's the code used
to compose his message.

The squares you get indicate that the code your software is using to display
messages is not compatible with "iso-8859-1".  Which is strange, since
*your* message was posted as "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1",
also (i.e., you can type more than you can display!).

You may be able to alter the settings for the display code that your
software uses.  Check your configuration settings.  If not, you're SOL, and
you should probably compose a letter of complaint to the authors of your
software.

For example, my e-mail software (Forté Agent) tells me that I use "Western
Europe (Codepage 1252)" and that my messages are posted as "Western
windows-compatible (us-ascii, ISO-8859-1)".  It gives me numerous options to
alter this if I so chose, so that (for example) I could type using a Korean
charset, or a Swedish one, etc. etc.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce Probst              bprobst at netspace.net.au
Melbourne, Australia      MSTie #72759
"Ah, Mr. Claus -- you have a nasty habit of surviving."
ASL FAQ              http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/mantis/ASLFAQ