[lug] Fixed-width fonts for email?

[Jeffrey Haemer]

Z,

Thanks!

(And yup, that's the kind of thing I could do in Gmail, too.  By default,
though, it's variable-width all the way.  Getting to fixed-width requires
work.)

When I was a boy, and had to walk backwards to the liquor store, through the
snow, uphill, both ways, all our mail clients were terminal-based and used
fixed-width fonts.  We all hand-crafted ASCII graphics into our mail
messages with impunity.

Now, maybe, not so much.

I get boxes like these  -- or even more elaborate, mysterious figures drawn
with "+" and "|" and "-" -- about  once a year, and I think, "WTF?"

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 3:11 PM, Zan Lynx <zlynx at acm.org> wrote:

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> Jeffrey Haemer wrote:
> > Do you still use fixed-width fonts to read email?
> >
> > I occasionally get email that contains ASCII graphics.  That won't work
> as
> > intended in my typical mail client (Gmail).   My early email clients
> (mail,
> > Mail, mailx, ...) were fixed-width, but those haven't been my primary
> > clients for years.
> >
> > The Dan Rather/CBS News forgeries suggest that even by 2004, most
> > non-technical people were unaware that fixed-width fonts had ever
> existed.
> > We geeks, however, still use them daily for programming.
> >
> > So, how about it?  Does your default mail reader still format the box,
> > below, as a box, with nice, lined-up edges and corners?  Just curious.
> >
> > +----------------+
> > | THIS IS A BOX. |
> > +----------------+
>
> In Thunderbird's default settings, it did not look like a box.  However,
> now that I have looked at the options, I have changed plain text view to
> use fixed width font display and it does look like a box.
>
> - --
> Zan Lynx
> zlynx at acm.org
>
> "Knowledge is Power.  Power Corrupts.  Study Hard.  Be Evil."
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-- 
Jeffrey Haemer <jeffrey.haemer at gmail.com>
720-837-8908 [cell]
http://goyishekop.blogspot.com
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