it does not even work on my mac if that makes you feel any better

On May 1, 2012, at 9:57 AM, Martin McCormick wrote:

> 	After struggling through the forest of extraneous Equals
> signs, seemingly random digits and other junk, i barely
> deciphered that this was the notice of someone's passing. It was
> unusually replete with gibberish so I looked up richtext in
> wikipedia as we have seen a number of messages on this list
> containing binary garbage.
> 
> 	When the characters arrive from the list, they really
> are what they appear to be,. Every =20 and so forth truly
> contain the Equals sign followed by two ordinary ascii digits
> such as 20 or some other pair of numbers.
> 
> 	What this is is an attempt by the mailer list software
> to translate 8-bit characters in to a code that, if paired with
> the right text reader, could turn them back in to the 8-bit
> character that was originally sent.
> 
> 	Since =20 is about as common as pimples, I began to
> check it out. As someone already pointed out, 20 is a space. 20
> is actually a hex 20. The decimal number for a white space is 32
> and the character that causes us to see =20 is 128 decimal bits
> higher on the chart so its decimal number is 128+32 or 160. On
> the ascii chart, that character is listed as a "non-breaking
> space." A text editor might stick that in if the space might
> otherwise break a line. I really don't completely know without
> further research, but the point is that it is some kind of space
> but not a normal one.
> 
> 	All this trash we see is 8-bit data that is designed to
> produce certain normal characters but also cause whatever is
> reading those data to behave in a certain manner such as do not
> break the line, etc.
> 
> 	I looked up richtext on wikipedia and surprise! surprise!
> it was developed by Microsoft starting in the late eighties and
> is now being discontinued but, like plastic cups and garbage
> bags, it will probably out live us in land fills.
> 
> 	The mailing list software is not deficient except that
> it would be nice if it just ignored richtext totally, but I have
> seen this richtext accent on other lists so the only real fix
> is to just turn it off. It's not doing any good on mailing lists
> at all.
> 
> 	Many lists ban binary attachments and html mail and only
> allow plain ascii text since not everybody out there can read
> proprietary formats which is what richtext is.
> 
> 	If you don't have control over your mailer settings,
> find somebody who does and raise cane until it gets fixed. It is
> broken and that is all there is to say.
> 
> 	Microsoft's idea of Heaven on Earth is to create
> something that vaguely resembles existing technology but doesn't
> work properly with anybody else's product so it's like
> kudzu. It spreads everywhere, chokes out everything else and
> will be with us for the foreseeable future.
> 
> 	In truth, after Microsoft came up with richtext,
> Macintosh was one of the first to let you output documents in it
> so MS had some help spreading this scourge.
> 
> 	I know. I should have a positive attitude. I positively
> hate decoding messages that should just read normally.
> 
> Martin WB5AGZ