invisible strands (off topic)

Sun Apr 2 21:45:58 UTC 2000

Both George Cole and Larry Horn recieve messages that appear to be empty,
but which are reported by their e-mail clients' tables of contents to
contain so many KB of content.  In the case of the most recent example,
here's what it looked like to my client (Eudora Light v3.05)

================
Hi All,

A friend of mine from the Chicago area says that it's common in her circle
to hear "fiancé" pronounced as if it rhymed with nuance. I'm from
California, part of my family is southern and part midwestern, and I have
heard that pronunciation in my life. How common is it? How correct is it?
Guy Williams
================

When I select "Show all headers" (or "blah, blah, blah"), here's what it
looks like.
================
<x.-.h.t.m.l><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<H.T.M.L><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META content="MSHTML 5.00.2614.3500" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV>Hi All,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>A friend of mine from the Chicago area says that it's common in her
circle
to hear "fiancé" pronounced as if it rhymed with nuance. I'm from California,
part of my family is southern and part midwestern, and I have heard that
pronunciation in my life. How common is it? How correct is it?</DIV>
<DIV>Guy Williams</DIV></BODY></.H.T.M.L>
</.x.-.h.t.m.l>
=============

The dots in the "H.T.M.L" are added to prevent HTML-aware e-mail clients
from treating this as HTML content, which is what it is.  So why does this
look like blank space to some?  I'm not sure.  One possibility, this
message is X-HTML encoded.  I don't know what that is, but perhaps George's
and Larry's clients don't either.  Another possibility, what we have here
is in Microsoft's implementation of HTML, which is enough different from
everyone else's (especially Netscape's) to cause trouble.

There may be a tweak to their client settings that would cause this content
to appear, but if George hasn't found it, that is pretty unlikely.  In my
experience, the only solution is to complain to users of Outlook Express to
TURN OFF THE @#$&%^!-ing HTML ENCODING.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Tom Kysilko        Practical Data Services
  pds at visi.com       Saint Paul MN USA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~