[plug] Re: Mail format thing (LookOut!)

[Steve Baker]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Leon Brooks" <leon at brooks.smileys.net>
To: <plug at plug.linux.org.au>
Sent: Tuesday, 19 December 2000 16:00
Subject: [plug] Re: Mail format thing (LookOut!)


> The whole product is designed to be a nuisance if you don't use it in the
> Microsoft Approved Way with Microsoft software end to end. Even then, it
is
> still a nuisance - which is probably not a design intent but nevertheless
> certainly a design issue. For example, it dumps you into the quoted
message with
> a few blank lines at the head. This encourages simply typing in a message
and
> hitting Send rather than quoting in context. Better to have no blank lines
and
> possibly to dump the user in at the end. Other examples include the
dreader
> ms-tnef bundle, defaulting to *Word* as the message editor, (an odd for
of) HTML
> after that, and so on ad nauseum.
>

Actually, the TNEF stuff is supported by Outlook, but not by Express.  This
is an exceptional PITA because with any other attachment encoding scheme,
Express will either decode and show them, or if it doesn't understand the
encoding, it says 'here is a chunk of data that I don't know anything
about'.  This is not too bad, because you can at least see the attachment,
even if you need to decode it manually.

When Express sees a tnef attachment, it goes 'oh, I know that I don't know
how to handle that, so I WILL JUST IGNORE IT'.  If the user doesn't know
there is an attachment there (by guessing from the message size, or from the
context of the message), they will never see it.  Extracting the attachment
is a case of saving the message, editing it and changing the 'TNEF' encoding
keyword to something else, re-opening the message and saving the
'winmail.dat' that you are now presented with, then running 'fentun' (free
tnef extractor) to get the attachments out.  Major hassle.  Then I usually
email the sender and tell them to turn off the option in Outlook to send
mail as Rich Text Format and change it to plain text, or HTML if they must
have fonts and colour.

If anyone knows how I can change to another Windows mail client and still
keep all the old messages that are currently in express folders, please let
me know.

Regards,
Steve

(Using Express, and sick of getting tnef attachments)