Fred Stluka on 30 Sep 2018 11:06:36 -0700


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Re: [PLUG] Thunderbird questions 

Alan,


One wants
          to be able to read anything one gets, and to have everyone able to read anything one           sends.  The latter goal is helped by sending only ASCII stuff(remember EBCIDC?<G>) 

Exactly!  I never send any special Unicode chars.  Just plain
ASCII (and HTML, consisting of all ASCII chars).

I'm constantly deleting special Microsoft-only chars from
incoming emails, cut/pastes from Web pages, etc.  It's
amazing the number of foolish Windows users who allow
MS products to insert the special MS-only "smart quotes",
"em dashes", "single char ellipsis" chars, etc, into their
otherwise valid ASCII and Unicode docs.

Based on the efforts I've seen on my software projects and
those of various colleagues, the industry must spend hundreds
of millions of dollars every year cleaning up data from MS
sources that looks wrong or causes errors in the rest of the
world.


> Here's the answer to your question about double spacing:
> - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1120795
         Thanks.  I've found my own work-around: use the select font entry.  I think that is what 
         I did; at any rate, I am now single-spaced.



Good!  Did that fix it permanently, or just for the one message
you were composing?  In any case, I suggest the recommended
fix above also.  No point in having it start a new paragraph at
each newline if you're in the habit of hitting CR explicitly to create
your own line breaks as I do.
     When one gets out of ASCII, or out of what stuff appears on the keyboard, the            question becomes very difficult.  Do you use TeX? There is a technique for that; and            emacs has a mode allowing different diacritical marks. I am going to try the emacs            method here:  ± , ½, £, °.    !!!  Now those are not diacritical marks, and indeed I            cheated: I cut and pasted from a file I had.  But there should be a way to do that            easily within TB, no? 

No, I don't use TeX.  Mostly HTML and Markdown (which generates
HTML).  All my documents, resume, contracts, etc., are HTML.  I also
use LibreOffice as needed to open and read non-HTML docs from
other people

Looks like the emacs method worked.  I see a plus/minus char, a
1/2 fraction char, a British pound char, and a temperature degree
char.  Personally, I never use any special chars.  I stick to plain ASCII.


--Fred
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Fred Stluka -- Bristle Software, Inc. -- http://bristle.com
#DontBeATrump -- Make America Honorable Again!
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On 9/29/18 1:23 PM, Alan McConnell wrote:



On 09/28/2018 08:47 PM, Fred Stluka wrote:

Alan,

Looks good!  Came through with bold, italics, big font, exactly as
you described.

Be aware though that people on this list seem to pretty strongly
prefer plain text emails.
          <G>  You are preaching to the choir.  The stuff I sent you was just for an experiment.           It is unlikely that I'll use all those tricks except perhaps as a joke with friends.   One wants           to be able to read anything one gets, and to have everyone able to read anything one           sends.  The latter goal is helped by sending only ASCII stuff(remember EBCIDC?<G>) 


Here's the answer to your question about double spacing:
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1120795
         Thanks.  I've found my own work-around: use the select font entry.  I think that is what 
         I did; at any rate, I am now single-spaced.


Diacritical marks are going to be a Unicode thing, like umlauts,
etc.  Whatever technique you use to type them into any app on
your Linux box, it should work the same for TBird.
           When one gets out of ASCII, or out of what stuff appears on the keyboard, the            question becomes very difficult.  Do you use TeX? There is a technique for that; and            emacs has a mode allowing different diacritical marks. I am going to try the emacs            method here:  ± , ½, £, °.    !!!  Now those are not diacritical marks, and indeed I            cheated: I cut and pasted from a file I had.  But there should be a way to do that 
           easily within TB, no?





--
Alan McConnell :http://globaltap.com/~alan/
     "We are easy to manage; a gregarious people, full of sentiment,
     clever at mechanics, and we love our luxuries."(Robinson Jeffers)
           Note the new, different sigs, above and below.  Every day a new signature! 



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