Garbled messages

[Joel S. Berson]

Some lists refuse mail if it is not plain text.  And (I believe)
those who read the digest will be distressed by messages sent in
"rich text" (aka "styled text"), since the encoding is visible in the
archive, even if most other recipients' mail servers decode them properly.

URL's come through OK, and clickable, in plain text (I am using
Eudora).  Is there any real need for the ADS-L to permit styled text?

Joel

At 1/14/2006 11:09 PM, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Garbled messages
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>On 1/14/06, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I don't know what to say or do, y'all. Even my saved copies are now
> > all gobbledygook! Hence, I can't  do a re-send. WTF!
>
>As I've emailed Jesse, the culprits seem to be AOL (for Ron and Barry)
>and Gmail (for Wilson). If the "rich-text" option is set (in Gmail at
>least-- I assume AOL works similarly), then the post may end up
>garbled. It won't *always* be garbled, though-- I believe a URL has to
>be in the body of the text for HTML coding to get triggered by Gmail
>or AOL.
>
>This is based on personal experience, since I often post via Gmail
>(even though the Penn address is the one that shows up in my posts'
>headers). The only time one of my posts was unreadable for some was
>when I sent it in rich-text and included a URL:
>
>http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0512D&L=ADS-L&P=R1314
>
>But Wilson, don't worry... The listserv archive has all of these posts
>in ungarbled form, even if they're unreadable in our own private
>archives.
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer