Hi,
On 6 Aug 2004 at 10:27, Weinger, Jerrold (DSCP) spoke, thus:
> I am a bit puzzled. None of the Braillenote List e-mails in my mailbox
> fits this description. Indeed, all of these e-mails are formatted. I use
> the Braillenote BT 32 having Keysoft Version 5.1 Build 22. I Also use
> Microsoft Outlook at one location, and Microsoft Outlook Express at another
> location. Using Microsoft Outlook, a test print of a randomly selected
> e-mail from this list prints perfectly on a laser printer.
First of all, all three email clients in common share the characteristic
that paragraphs are, internally, reformatted as lines with soft linebreaks
inserted automatically at your selected margin. Therefore, unless
corruption occurs before you retrieve the mail message, as at your
transport or that of another network which relayed the list mail to you,
you will appear to have no difficulties reading email produced by the
BrailleNote on any Windows-based and non-compliant client. Windows has
always used paragraph format for its text files - this is true even for
Notepad and Wordpad, if you don't force a new line, there is no new line.
It was true for Outlook Express for some time, but it isn't anymore.
Printing, likewise, is likely to appear correct because of your mailer or
word processor's automatic wrapping features. However, these are soft
breaks, not hard breaks. Look at the message with your BrailleNote in
editing mode, or cursor through. Note the "New line" (CR/LF) appears only
at the end of each paragraph, the lines separating the paragraph are
divided by "Line breaks". If you were to take that flat file and display
it on an 80-by-25 terminal with no wrapping capability, the mail would
look attrocious. Last but not least, the randomly-selected email you
printed may not have been generated by a BrailleNote.
The problem I have lies at my transport, which correctly limits the line
length of the email. In doing so, it introduces CR/LF pairs, which my
mailer, which by default doesn't wrap but which I've chosen to make wrap
and guess at where lines should really be ending, will simply substitute
newlines with spaces (correctly since the newlines shouldn't be occurring
there), separating the words where splits occur. Ann is less fortunate,
and her mailer doesn't wrap at all unless told to, resulting in almost
complete illegibility. From the viewpoint of standards, though, this is
the absolute correct thing to do, since all mail should fit into a
terminal display when written correctly.
> Would you send me, off list, an example of what you are describing?
If you would like, sure - when I next stumble across such a message, I
will forward it on as an attachment to those who want a goosy at it.
Would anyone else like to see what their mail to me looks like? In case
the description is sufficient - simply take the text file resulting from
saving a message written by a BrailleNote user, count to the 998th
character along a given line, so long as a newline isn't encountered, and
hit newline (enter) there, regardless of where it is (including mid-word).
That is how is available via POP3. If you have GNU fmt or Pegasus Mail
or another intelligent formatter, process the file so that line lengths
are estimated. You have there a reasonable simulation of what I see.
Cheers,
Sabahattin
--
Thought for the day:
Bagpipes (n): an octopus wearing a kilt.
Sabahattin Gucukoglu
Phone: +44 20 7,502-1615
Mobile: +44 7986 053399
http://www.sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/
Email/MSN: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
