At 12:09 04/09/06, Gordon Totty wrote:
>I have noticed when I post to the list my posting appears with
>equal signs (=) in the text. I've seen this in postings by
>others too. Yet most of the real pros using this list seem able
>to avoid it.
>
>What's the secret to avoiding extraneous equal sign insertions?
>What am I and some others doing wrong?
Hi Gordon
These equal signs appear in your email because you have "quoted
printable" encoding enabled in your email program ...instead of
"plain text" or "8-bit". (8 bit means the standard 128 ASCI
characters. Note that 2 to the 8th power equals 128.)
Quoted printable allows for 256 characters, twice as many
as ASCI.
Each of Quoted Printable's 128 extended characters is
represented by an equal sign followed by two hexidecimal
characters. For example, something like "=AB" where A and B
can be any of these 16 characters: 0,1,2,...,9,A,B,C,D,E,F.
(I put the quotation marks around AB only for emphasis.)
Lines of quoted-printable encoded data must not be longer
than 76 characters. To satisfy this requirement without
altering the encoded text, "soft line breaks" may be added
as desired. A soft line break consists of "= " at the end
of an encoded line. (An equal sign followed by two blanks.
So the = you see at the end of lines of text are there to
indicate the end of lines.
If a real equal sign must be represented, "=20" is used.
A space is represented by "=00".
Quoted printable should only be used if you need to use a character
set that includes letters and symbols that aren't present in the
normal English alphabet (for example, letters with accent marks for
foreign languages). There's no need to use quoted printable on
English language mailing lists. If you look at the headers of your
messages and see Quoted-Printable, you should probably change the
setting that enables text-only.
Regards,
Bill
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