At 04:32 PM 6/8/2001, Robert Keezer wrote:
>X-Mailer: AOL 6.0 for Windows US sub 10520
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>Certain computer dummies on the Vanagon list as myself don't know what HTML
>is and I need more than UN-abbreviating the Letters to understand. Thanks for

Bob, the only way *you* can do it is go back to AOL version 5, or hope that
version 6.x once more allows plain text.

The *other* answer is that HyperText Markup Language is the most common way
of writing web pages.  It requires a web browser to read properly, and if
you read it with a browser it does all the standard web-page things,
including wrapping text to fit the size of your viewing window, setting
font and font size and color, etc.  Unfortunately 1) without the browser,
or if it's stuck in the middle of a digest, it simply looks confusing and
2) it takes up lots more room than plain text.  The actual text of your
message is below, actually a very minimal set of HTML, and the <BR> tags
tell it to make line breaks at those points regardless of the window size;
most such messages are both harder to read and have more wasted space than
that one:

cheers
david

><x-html>
><HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT  SIZE=2>Certain computer dummies on
>the Vanagon list as myself don't know what HTML
><BR>is and I need more than UN-abbreviating the Letters to understand.
>Thanks for
><BR>any info in layman's terms you can offer. And if I am sending e-mail
>in the
><BR>wrong format, then I will be able to do something about it. OK, I am
>not as
><BR>educated as most of you, so 's your chance to bring me out of the
>telephone
><BR>age.
><BR>
><BR>Robert Keezer
><BR>1982 Westfalia
><BR>Seattle</FONT></HTML>
>
></x-html>

David Beierl - Providence, RI
  http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage"
'85 GL "Poor Relation"