Hi all --
 
I am on a couple of lists that interact with MS Exchange (Win95 mailer)
in an annoying way.
 
The Win95 mailer will send rich text in replies to addresses that it
thinks are capable of understanding it, by default.  It does so by putting
the formatting information in a MIME or uuencode block.
 
On mailing lists, these blocks come across in text form, as long chunks
of encoded binary, thoroughly useless to most subscribers.
 
It is possible to turn rich-text off, but to do so one must modify the
properties of the reply address on each reply.  Enough of a nuisance, and
obscure enough, that many people don't do that.
 
The result is lists riddled with these useless MIME/uuencode blocks.  Waste
of bandwidth, bloated digests and archives, and so on.
 
Does anyone have an idea about what it is in the headers, that might be
triggering MS Exchange to try to send rich text in replies?  It does not do
so for all replies.  Nor, for that matter, for all lists, at least as far as
I can tell.
 
Is there something in the default headers that Listserv generates, for any
of the HEADERS options settings, that has to do with the ability to accept
MIME/uuencode, or the ability to accept rich text, that MS Exchange might
be cluing on?
 
And does anyone have a contact at Microsoft, who might know someone who'd
be able to tell me what it is that MS Exchange uses to decide whether to
default rich-text to "on" in replies?
 
Thanks much...
 
Phil Schwarz
co-list-owner, ASPERGER@SJUVM (in beta test)
Phil Schwarz
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