One of the aspects of OE that I had hoped would be fixed in Entourage has
not been fixed, apparently.
Both programs impose word wrapping on the mail user whether he or she wants
it or not. You cannot send a mail message in plain text without word
wrapping. What's more, you cannot <receive> a message in plain text that
isn't word wrapped without OE or Entourage invasively wrapping it.
Eudora has always supported an option for the user to turn off word wrap if
desired. This option is extremely useful in many circumstances, particularly
in sending and receiving scripting or program code, where breaking lines
wrecks havoc with the compiler.
For some reason--I have <never> understood the proffered explanations--the
OE team seems to feel that users should not be entrusted with the ability to
send unwrapped messages. Why? Would this endanger someone? Provide a way to
inflict viruses? Promote obscenity? Of course not! It is a wholly arbitrary
decision on their part to impose a restriction that serves absolutely no
useful purpose, and inconveniences many of the people who are the most
supportive of their product (e.g., people who write scripts and post them to
the mailing list, and people who want to copy and use such scripts).
Since most mailing lists do not allow attachments (which <can> be a means of
distributing destructive viruses), that is not an alternative method of
script distribution.
HTML is useful in limited contexts, where one knows that HTML can be
properly received--as is the case on the OE and Entourage mailing lists.
However, HTML takes a lot more bandwidth and disk space, and has annoyed
people who do not want the scripts, while plain text would be easier for
them to ignore. Furthermore, on other scripting lists (like OneClick-Talk or
MACSCRPT), not everyone uses OE or Entourage, and not everyone can read HTML
messages. (There are still a lot of Emailer users out there, for one thing.)
Therefore, HTML won't work in those situations.
We really, really need to have Entourage provide an option for users to turn
off automatic line breaking. Word wrapping the display to window width, of
course, is desirable and should continue. But it should be possible to send
messages without wrapping them, and to receive unwrapped messages without
having them automatically broken into short lines.
Developers: Please, please reconsider this feature request.
Users: Please let the developers know if you want this.
--
Peace be with you!
Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> XNS Name: =Allen Watson
My web page: <http://home.earthlink.net/~allenwatson/>
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