At 1:33 PM -0400 7/29/00, Munday, Merrick is rumored to have typed:
In this case I think you need to back up a little, be a little less harsh when you're not in an area that lies within your expertise.
You are correct. I made an error to assume that Microsoft would be able to write a compliant application that could do the same things that other clients (Eudora, etc.) have been able to do for the past five or six years. I recently suggested to someone else using a Microsoft mail client that they need not copy/paste email messages into Word to use a rudimentary "Find," and they patiently explained that it was necessary. Frankly, I find it _impossible_ to believe there is no way to turn off something as simple as word wrap, but since I have no intention of wasting the required time to research the issue, will tentitively assume you to be correct.
But you are right that I don't know Microsoft mail clients very well. See, I use real mail clients (Eudora Pro, elm, even Mail appears to be heads-and-shoulders above Outlook or Outlook Express), and so will in the future not suggest that _anything_ is possible with Outlook or Express, but will rather simply tell people to get a real client and quit wasting time with an inferior product. Satisfied now?
If you use the excuse that, "but it's what they use," you are contributing to the problem by accepting it and working around it. Tell them they simply cannot maintain the list with their damaged client, quit trying to find workarounds that allows them to use the Web to get around a problem of their own making, and get on with your life. Seems pretty simple to me; you help them, you endorse the damaged bahavior about which you complain. Stop one or the other.
Example: I reject HTML mail to my mailing lists. People with Outlook or Outlook Express send it by default, so the server sends them a note telling them to reset their default. They complain when it is rejected, saying it's the way mail _should_ be sent. I tell them to talk to Microsoft for setting such a stupid default, and continue to reject web pages. They don't like it.
I don't care.
(Note the pattern here...I actually expect people to _think,_ where everyone else seems to accept user error [or user stupidity] as an excuse
to
write complex work-arounds.)
In this case, then, the "user stupidity" is not resetting a default, but rather using a damaged client; my error. If they insist on using the client, it's their problem. They are welcomed to bang their head into a brick wall, too, if they choose - but I won't supply the asprin.
Charlie