Soonly
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>My local computer guru introduced me to the acronym RSN.
>"Real soon now."  Meaning "in the foreseeable future," or "when I finally
get time .

No need to re-invent the wheel. There's a perfectly good Southern U.S.
expression already: directly.

My last post on the evils of HTML mail
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Me >Actually, I pay much less attention to HTML mail ... I won't take the
time.
Wayne Smith >You pay no attention to HTML e-mail because you see the HTML.

I have no idea what you mean by this. I expect HTML to stay put in my Web
browser, not creep into my e-mail. Ninety-eight percent of HTML mail is spam.

Me >In addition to the reasons already mentioned, HTML e-mail is often
illegible. When you send plain text, people can choose a typeface and point
size that's comfortable for them to read. When you send HTML mail, you
force them to deal with your choices combined with however their e-mail
programs interpret them.
Wayne Smith >... But HTML-enabled software has the potential of displaying
the message the way the reader wants ... especially if the writer uses good
techniques such as relative font sizes.

No, it doesn't. It has the potential of displaying the mail the way the
*writer* sees it on his machine, not the way the reader sees it. If the
writer wants me to read it--and if he doesn't, why did he send it?--the
writer will make it easy to read.

Me (quoting Bill Blinn) >... Gerald E. Boyd's explanation
<http://www.expita.com/nomime.html> of why "pretty" e-mail is a bad thing
and how you can keep your e-mail program from sending all that junk.
Wayne Smith >Yet even the author admits "...this makes your E-mail
interesting and pretty to look at..."!

Boyd's tongue was firmly in his cheek when he wrote that.

If I'm comfortable with my software and it's adequate for my needs, why
should I change? And why should someone else care? It's not a contest, but
for those who think it is, remember--Spammer Jones and his brother Virus
Jones target clueless newbies who have the latest equipment. I have good
Internet hygiene and--knock wood*--have never (as in never ever) activated
a virus.

Russ Hunt >Thanks for this site, too.  This is very useful for explaining
to subscribers what they can do to post to my lists.

For those of you who didn't go there, Russ is referring to Boyd's terrific
list of step-by-step instructions, by e-mail client, for configuring e-mail
clients to send plain text.

Cheers,
Deborah

*"Touch wood" in British English.