Thanks for an excellent and comprehensive analysis, Dr. Grovsnus! :) I do however vehemently object against your pro-HTML argument, and agree with Soleil's post on the subject. E-mail is a medium to send text messages over networks like the Internet. The lowest common denominator of e-mail clients is that they can send, receive and display text messages, and heck, you shouldn't even need an e-mail client to read a mail spool file in plain text. The sad state of affairs that some e-mail clients, notably some distributed by an infamous illegal monopoly, come deliberately misconfigured by default to convert the plain text in messages into HTML does not warrant accepting and allowing this standards-breaking behaviour. HTML is, as the acronym implies, a Hypertext Markup Language. This language is to be parsed by an HTML interpreter to present structured documents containing hyperlinks. It has nothing whatsoever to do in the body of e-mail messages, and it's totally useless and redundant when attached to an e-mail simply repeating the entire preceding plain-text message. Not to mention that the HTML code generated by these misconfigured (or *broken*, really) e-mail clients is usually not even compliant with HTML standards, it's unnecessarily bloated, it contains proprietary non-W3C-standard tags and it constitutes a severe security and privacy risk. At e.g. the below URL, those poor souls who are forced to use HTML-spewing e-mail clients will find instructions on how to revert to standards compliant settings and how to stop being hated by the rest of the Internet: http://support.pinehurst.net/email/nomime.html (this really should be in every mailing list's FAQ!) On the HTML point I agree with Oh Jay, but of course it's insane to threaten to break netiquette and most likely one's ISP's "acceptable use policy" by posting garbage to a mailing list if one objects to other people posting garbage. :) One problem with the broken e-mail clients is that the people using them don't even get to see the avalanches of crap they're spreading and receiving, so Oh Jay's planned "terrorism" would mainly hurt us innocent bystanders. Finally a note on the usage of the word "fascist". Somehow I doubt that our friend is an Italian nationalist believing in a Great-Italian totalitarian government and Mussolini's theses about "dynamic will of life", "restless activism" and so on... ;) Yeah, yeah, I'm being anal retentive as usual, but totalitarianism/antidemocracy is just one element of fascism, just like it's an element of so many other weird ideologies. Not-a-doctor-yet-and-I'm-not-sure-I'll-bother Mair -- Emanuel Mair ___________________________________________________ e@mair.com Support free hardware choice and save AmigaOS! mair@medstud.gu.se http://AmigaPOP.8bit.co.uk .-. .- -.. .. --- -....- .- -.- - .. ...- .. - .-.- - ...-.-