On Sat, 11 Dec 2010 12:29 +0100, "Peter Blodow" <p.blo...@dreki.de> wrote: > Hello gentlemen, > > lately, I saw a lot of attempts to get schematic drawings of circuitry > over the email line using ordinary sign characters, e.g. backslash or > underscore or the like. > > Please keep in mind that these signs may make up a sensible sketch on > your screen as you send it down the line, but on others like mine there > appears a crazy heap of lines and signs making no sense at all (without > redrawing it all, trying to understand what has been meant). It all > depends on the font, character set and size, tab- and line spacing the > different mail programs are using. You can't be sure that aligned > characters stay aligned when they are displayed on a different system. > The main problem with this is the use of national and especially > proportional fonts.
Email is a pure text medium. Not HTML, not rich-text, not formatted text, just plain text. That includes using non-' proportional fonts. If your email client is using proportional fonts, you should be able to tell it not to. If you can't tell it to use a mono-spaced font, then it is broken. Are we also not allowed to show information in columns, because your proportional fonts will muck up the columns? For a complex drawing, by all means feel free to do it in a CAD program of your choice, export as a pdf or gif, post it on a webpage, and include a link in your message. But for a tiny and simple sketch, there is absolutely nothing wrong with ASCII art in a mono-spaced font. > So, please use picture (graphic) formats for mailing drawings instead of > this seemingly simple way. I'm not 100% sure if the list allows attachments or not. It definitely does NOT allow large attachments (or very large messages). Sending a 500K pdf or jpeg to every list member to show something that fits in a few lines of ASCII art is just rude. > You can draw on scratch paper with a pencil > which is easier than constructing pictures by means of the normal > character set. And then what? How does the scratch paper sketch get into an email? I suppose you could scan it or take a digital photo, but both of those are a pain for a simple sketch. As an added bonus, the ASCII art is in-line with the rest of the message, while a graphical file needs to be opened in another tab or window, and you need to switch your attention back and forth from image to text as you read. So the ASCII version is more convenient for the reader - if they have their email client configured correctly. John Kasunich resident grouchy old traditionalist -- John Kasunich jmkasun...@fastmail.fm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Oracle to DB2 Conversion Guide: Learn learn about native support for PL/SQL, new data types, scalar functions, improved concurrency, built-in packages, OCI, SQL*Plus, data movement tools, best practices and more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/oracle-sfdev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
