Re: AD4s are what?
R.F. Locke (rfl@OFFPRO.NET)
Wed, 30 Dec 1998 14:14:45 -0500
> <snip>
> (Steve, what are these " A D 4- " that keep appearing on your email?)
> <snip>
>
>
Encoding. Mostly has to do with the setup of the sender's mail
program, i.e. the font and character set being encoded into the
message and the page information sent with the message.
On the receive side, your mail reader either doesn't have access
to the proper font and/or the page information is not being sent
with the message.
Here's an example. I use Netscape. The default encoding is
Western (ISO-8859-1). What that means is that when my mail reader
doesn't know how to "interpret" a character, it will assume an ISO
interpretation. It's like saying: "every word you hear, unless
otherwise specified, will be in the English language."
So when someone forwards a message or meassage fragment containing
a "<snip>", and their mail program doesn't re-encode "<" and ">"
as ISO characters, it gets forwarded to me as a
"+ADw-snip+AD4-". If, however I go into my "Edit" pull-down menu
and change my default encoding another setting, in this case, to
"Unicode", the +ADw-snip+AD4- reverts to "<snip>".
I have not experimented with leaving my encoding default as
"Unicode" since fooling around with software default settings
conforms to the "Rubber Bag Full of JELLO" theorem.
On a related topic, see the "Why you shouldn't send HTML encoded
mail" discussion. That relates to the "6 Pounds of JELLO in a 5
Pound Bag" corollary.
Rich Locke
