I don't think the "reply" topic will ever end. We'll just have to deal with
it the same way we deal with the color of the TenTec dot, true north, and
"what is the best radio for a newbie?".
Please always remember this...the critics of an in-place policy are always
the loudest, even if they're in the minority. This is true in most any
situation as supporters don't need to be as vocal since everything is
working "status quo". In the case of the list "reply" function, I've only
seen complaints from a handful of the several hundred list subscribers.
There may be a lot of support sent directly to the list admin that we didn't
see. The reply function may have worked differently a a few
weeks/months/years ago, but it's set this way now and we need to live with
it. Regardless, the admin did already say a few weeks back that the reply
function is staying the way it is. I subscribe to a dozen different lists
and they're all configured differently. Some like the reply to the list
(the ICOM list, for example). When the list software changed last year,
people complained when the reply went direct to the sender rather than the
list. Same, but opposite situation here on the TenTec list. Just take the
extra 5 seconds to verify your "To:" address before hiting that "Send"
button.
Also, there've seen some posts from people trying to help. Unfortunately,
what wasn't taken into consideration is that not everyone uses the same
e-mail program nor does everyone retrieve e-mail from servers running the
same "post office" software. Different e-mail clients and server software
work differently. Some handle the "From:", "Sender:", "Reply to:" header
fields differently. Some ignore the "Reply to:" and use just the "From:"
field when you hit "Reply". Some use the "Sender:" field for replies. The
occasional problem with missing "Subject:" lines falls in the same category.
On top of that, there are also have different header languages and message
encoding formats. I set my e-mail client to "English" headers and
"US-ASCII" encoding as that is the oldest and most widely supported.
Outlook defaults to "Western European (ISO)" and sometimes, the formatting,
even plain text, gets scrambled by some server software or e-mail clients.
BTW, changing the e-mail format to HTML will not help the situation.
Remember, all HTML is stripped before the message is sent by the list
server. URLs and mailto lines are converted by the e-mail client program
itself. For example, in Outlook, it looks for "http://"; and automatically
converts it to a link. Same with the "mailto://";. If you're using a
version Outlook, then these should have been highlighted in blue and you can
click on it, but's an empty link. I didn't need to do anything
special...Outlook just automatically scans the text and looks for the "http"
and "mailto" prefix followed by "://". Other mail clients might also do the
same thing, but not all do. Other prefixes are "ftp://";, "gopher://";,
"telnet://";, and even "\\c:\" (local drives).
So, please folks, can we just get back to the topic at hand...should the
Orion II have a color plasma display and should it have a red or orange dot
indication to true north???
=)
- Aaron Hsu, NN6O (ex-KD6DAE)
{nn6o}@arrl.net
{athsu}@unistudios.com
No-QRO Int'l #1,000,006
. -..- - .-. .- ".... . .- ...- -.--"
p.s. Shields up, flame suit on, tounge-in-cheek, and crawling back into the
woodwork with an Argosy 525.
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