Netiquette

People that use MS Word to write their emails should be shot!

Once in a while I get messages like that, for instance as part of a mailing list.
Such an email message is normally a “multi-part message in MIME format”. The first part is the normal plain text version of the email, and the second part is the HTML / XML version. (Sorry, I don’t mean “HTML”, of course, I mean “MS’s definition of HTML”!)

The second part of such an email is about 10 times (yes, TEN times) as large as the plain text version, and looks something like this:

<html xmlns:o=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" =
xmlns:w=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" =
xmlns=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">

<head>
<META HTTP-EQUIV=3D"Content-Type" CONTENT=3D"text/html; =
charset=3Dus-ascii">

<meta name=3DProgId content=3DWord.Document>
<meta name=3DGenerator content=3D"Microsoft Word 10">
<meta name=3DOriginator content=3D"Microsoft Word 10">
<link rel=3DFile-List href=3D"cid:filelist.xml@01C329BC.28093B70">
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:DoNotRelyOnCSS/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:SpellingState>Clean</w:SpellingState>
<w:GrammarState>Clean</w:GrammarState>
<w:DocumentKind>DocumentEmail</w:DocumentKind>
<w:EnvelopeVis/>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
</w:Compatibility>
<w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel>
</w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]-->
<style>
<!--
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
span.EmailStyle17
{mso-style-type:personal-compose;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial;
mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;
mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;
color:windowtext;}
span.SpellE
{mso-style-name:"";
mso-spl-e:yes;}
span.GramE
{mso-style-name:"";
mso-gram-e:yes;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */=20
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
</style>
<![endif]-->
</head>

<body lang=3DEN-US link=3Dblue vlink=3Dpurple =
style=3D'tab-interval:.5in'>

<div class=3DSection1>

Oh, yeah, you’ll notice that no text has been written yet by now!
Next, for every line of text in the email, you get a piece of HTML code as beautiful as this:

<p class=3DMsoNormal =
style=3D'mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none'><font
size=3D2 face=3D"Courier New"><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier =
New"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

Now, take a good look at that code! Yes, that is a   you see there! A space! Yes, this is the code for an empty line! Isn’t this just fantastic?!?

Please, if you don’t need formatting in your emails (and why would you ever?), just send plain text emails! And certainly, don’t ever use MS Word for writing your email!

Tags: email, html, microsoft, word

Wednesday, June 4th, 2003 Computing

3 Comments to Netiquette

Oh, I agree *so* much… though maybe not on the shooting part!

It’s mostly ignorance, people just don’t know that they create such garbage. If you use MS software, you never see how f*cked up the code really is…

Shouldn’t be too hard to write angry-reply.pl, that filters on MS-mails and auto-replies with a nice introduction to netiquette..