Re: [Evolution] Odd text display character drops

[Brewster Gillett <bg fdi us>]

> On Thu, 2010-09-02 at 03:45 -0700, Brewster Gillett wrote:
> > For years I have grown accustomed to annoying oddities in messages
> > from people with Yahoo email accounts, generally when in reply edit
> > mode. Text enclosed in dotted-line boxes which appear and disappear, and
> > resist trimming edits.

Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk> wrote:
> Yeah, annoying isn't it.  It's down to the fact that Yahoo (and others)
> send a mangled form of HTML messages with many of the bits of text (and
> and advertising) in HTML tables or DIV structures.  The underlying
> editor for Evo interprets the HTML, even when editing in text mode, and
> tries to keep the replies and edits consistent with the original HTML.
>
> One way around it is to highlight the text in the original message that
> you want in your reply before pressing reply, then only that text will
> be copied and it starts from a much saner base.

bg:

I had forgotten about that feature - perhaps I'll switch to using
that as my default and see what that does. Thanks!

> I believe also that the underlying Evo editor is changing shortly so
> many of these things will go away.

bg:

Wooden it be loverly :-)

bg:

> > I cannot visualize what mechanism could be operating, either at
> > Yahoo or in Evo, to drop some parts of a text string in one message
> > as viewed by the recipient, then different parts of the same string
> > in a subsequent transmission less than an hour later.

Pete:

> If it is text within a fixed width table, then it might cut of the text
> - especially if you have a larger default text.

bg:

That makes a certain twisted sense and I should have thought of it
myself. But when I CTL-U the originals, no table indicators are
revealed.
>
bg:

> > I hasten to confirm that these are not manifestations occurring
> > when in Reply Edit mode - this is how the text block looked in the
> > two original emails as I received them.

pete:
> As Xav said, look at the source of the email to see what sort of HTML
> container the text is in and even if all the text is still there.

bg:

As I reported to Xav, all the text (without all the missing characters,
of course) just as it originally showed up, is what is displayed when I
CTL-U the original two emails.

pete:

> But it's probably down to stupid mangled Yahoo HTML if you ask me :-)

bg:

Agreed. And what do you bet that when a Yahoo Mail user receives one
of these cockups, it looks just fine to them, and behaves okay when
in Reply Edit mode. I'll just bet. It would be a Yahoo kind of thing to
do - "Let's make our email formatting annoyingly proprietary so that
people will eventually give up their email client apps and just start
using Yahoo for everything."

Well, maybe not, but you gotta admit it would make a good made-for-TV
movie :-)

All kidding aside, I have frequently considered informing all those
correspondents I encounter who use Yahoo Mail that I will no longer
endure the aggravation of attempting to write properly edited
responses to their messages.........

Thanks for the suggestion, Pete.

Brewster

-- 
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Embrace a sharing community of sustainable justice low-carbon diversity
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W. Brewster Gillett             bg fdi us            Portland, OR  USA
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Simply because you don't like to hear it, that doesn't make it untrue.
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