email question

I've googled and gone to Ask.com, but can't get an answer. Surely someone on TUG must know the answer. Why does there randomly appear the number 20 in forwarded emails? Often it will be in the middle of a sentence or in a list. Sometimes it has a hyphen before it like this: -20

Anyone know?

The ASCII representation for a space character is the hexadecimal number 20. If software is trying to encode a space character somewhere that it's not expected, e.g. in a file name, literal quote, etc, it needs a way to represent it. I believe that the MIME encoding (way to encode binary data into email) for space is something like %20, or something like that.

You have similar problems encoding space characters into URLs (web page addresses). I believe that the HTTP encoding for space is &nbsp

I noticed the same thing recently when sending an e-mail directly from the comcast.net mail box (never happened while sending through Outlook). Went into the properties and sure enough where my name was displayed was a %20. I never set up my mail account that way, but Blues may be onto something.

Blues said:

The ASCII representation for a space character is the hexadecimal number 20. If software is trying to encode a space character somewhere that it's not expected, e.g. in a file name, literal quote, etc, it needs a way to represent it. I believe that the MIME encoding (way to encode binary data into email) for space is something like %20, or something like that.

You have similar problems encoding space characters into URLs (web page addresses). I believe that the HTTP encoding for space is &nbsp

Click to expand...

Thanks. Is there anyway you could translate that information into "Computer Speak for Dummies" I don't know exactly what that all means.

simple version is that humans dont speak computer language, and computers dont speak human language...so whenever you are using an application that displays something on your screen, the computer is translating that from "computer speak" to something you recognize. (and vice versa when you type email etc etc)

sometimes things dont quite work perfectly in the translation process..and thats why you see bizarre things like that from time to time.

Karen G said:

Thanks. Is there anyway you could translate that information into "Computer Speak for Dummies" I don't know exactly what that all means.

Click to expand...

Computers and the internet don't transmit letters, they transmit numbers. The computer at the receiving end must know how to interpret those numbers. Each character, whether it be a letter, punctuation mark, space, or numeral, is transmitted as its character number in the character set that has been specified (sort of like the Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring shown in A Christmas Story).

So the computer receives a string of several numbers, it goes to its "decoder ring" and figures out which characters those numbers represent and display those characters on the screen.

Here's a chart of the ASCII character set showing the character for each transmitted number. For instance, note that if the computer received a character number of 65 (decimal) it would interpret that as a capital A.



But I think what you are asking about has a somewhat different (but related) origin.

In so-called "quoted printable" encoding, used in some email systems, for instance, a space at the end of a line must be represented as =20. Sometimes somebody will copy some text from such a quoted printable document, and paste it into a document not using the quoted printable encoding. In the receiving system, the =20 is not interpreted as a space at the end of a line, and the =20 just gets carried along as some extraneous text. If the text then line wraps at a different place than the original text did, the =20's can get interspersed throughout the text.

TUGBrian said:

simple version is that humans dont speak computer language, and computers dont speak human language...so whenever you are using an application that displays something on your screen, the computer is translating that from "computer speak" to something you recognize. (and vice versa when you type email etc etc)

sometimes things dont quite work perfectly in the translation process..and thats why you see bizarre things like that from time to time.

Click to expand...

Okay, I get it now! It's like what I used to tell my kids if they questioned something: "That's just the way it is."

Makai Guy said:

In so-called "quoted printable" encoding, used in some email systems, for instance, a space at the end of a line must be represented as =20. Sometimes somebody will copy some text from such a quoted printable document, and paste it into a document not using the quoted printable encoding. In the receiving system, the =20 is not interpreted as a space at the end of a line, and the =20 just gets carried along as some extraneous text. If the text then line wraps at a different place than the original text did, the =20's can get interspersed throughout the text.

Click to expand...

I think that describes what I see.

The most recent thing that happened is this: I'm in a small group that meets for dinner twice a month. We send out a menu and people respond by email as to what they are bringing.

Responding people will type in what they are bringing and hit "reply all" which sends an email to the group so that everyone knows what everyone else is bringing. Often, when the email gets forwarded the mysterious =20's will show up in random places.

OK then, an even better answer is "that's what happens when people try to get too fancy."

In the beginning, email was all text. What you type and send to somebody is what they receive. No fancy fonts, colors, or pictures. Just text. And it works.

Then people wanted to add all the above. The vendors of email clients added the ability for all that fancy fru-fru. It's called sending email as rich text, or as HTML. And it's kinda like having power windows on your car. It's great until it breaks. The guy with the crank-up windows will always be able to open and close them. Power windows break, and then you have a problem.

Same thing with fancy email. Great when it works. Personally, I always set mine to send plain text. When you do so, the recipient should always get exactly what you write.

So tell your friends to turn off the bells and whistles, and you should be fine.

-Bob
(But I do have power windows on my car)

Also, some (like mine) will have problems interpreting the apostrophe.

Don said:

Also, some (like mine) will have problems interpreting the apostrophe.

Click to expand...

Mine too. On Firefox. My e-mail client (Agent) seems OK. I just live with it.

Jim Ricks