John,
Perhaps you can explain something here to clear the air.

You sent a message saying:

>>The facts are that smiley faces are text characters. :-)<<

When the message got to me, what I had on screen at the end of the line
was a graphic, pure and simple. A bright yellow emoticon graphic, not
ascii text characters. If this is not from HTML, then how does it get
converted from ascii to a graphic presentation.

Just curious, wanting to learn.

John Rodgers
88 GL driver