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Dodi Schultz
February 28th, 2014, 11:15 AM
This isn't a major issue, but I'm curious.

I use Thunderbird for e-mail. I believe many of my correspondents probably
use Outlook. But this particular weirdness occurs only with one of them.

If she types the classic smiley characters :-) what I see in her message is
a capital letter J, although other correspondents of hers apparently see it
as a graphic smiley; at least they haven't told her otherwise.

This puzzled us both. Then, she dug up from somewhere on the internet a
2009 note that described this very phenomenon but declared that this was a
problem that used to occur in Outlook-to-T'bird messages but it had
happened only with T'bird versions 1 and 2 and no longer existed with
versions 3 and later.

I'm using T'bird version 16. It's happening.

Can any of the techknowledgeable Dixonarians comment/explain?

--Dodi

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Paul Keating
February 28th, 2014, 12:47 PM
Have you perhaps told Thunderbird to show you only ASCII (or equivalently,
no HTML)? The J is probably because the smiley is at position 74 in
whatever font it's in.
On 28 Feb 2014 18:15, "Dodi Schultz" <DodiSchultz (AT) verizon (DOT) net> wrote:

>
> This isn't a major issue, but I'm curious.
>
> I use Thunderbird for e-mail. I believe many of my correspondents probably
> use Outlook. But this particular weirdness occurs only with one of them.
>
> If she types the classic smiley characters :-) what I see in her message
> is a capital letter J, although other correspondents of hers apparently see
> it as a graphic smiley; at least they haven't told her otherwise.
>
> This puzzled us both. Then, she dug up from somewhere on the internet a
> 2009 note that described this very phenomenon but declared that this was a
> problem that used to occur in Outlook-to-T'bird messages but it had
> happened only with T'bird versions 1 and 2 and no longer existed with
> versions 3 and later.
>
> I'm using T'bird version 16. It's happening.
>
> Can any of the techknowledgeable Dixonarians comment/explain?
>
> --Dodi
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Dixonary" group.
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Daniel Widdis
February 28th, 2014, 12:53 PM
The root of the problem is Outlook's autocorrect feature, which replaces
a typed-out smiley with a single "smiley" character in a substitute font
(I think it's "Wingdings"). If the recipient's computer does not have
the matching font, they get the corresponding letter in the default
font... and that letter happens to be a J.

The easiest fix is for the sender to go into their Outlook settings and
disable the auto-correcting of smileys.

Alternately, if every recipient of their email were to install the
Wingdings font on their machine, they could see the cute little smiley
face that the letter J in that font represents.

On 2/28/14, 9:15 AM, Dodi Schultz wrote:
>
> This isn't a major issue, but I'm curious.
>
> I use Thunderbird for e-mail. I believe many of my correspondents
> probably use Outlook. But this particular weirdness occurs only with
> one of them.
>
> If she types the classic smiley characters :-) what I see in her
> message is a capital letter J, although other correspondents of hers
> apparently see it as a graphic smiley; at least they haven't told her
> otherwise.
>
> This puzzled us both. Then, she dug up from somewhere on the internet
> a 2009 note that described this very phenomenon but declared that this
> was a problem that used to occur in Outlook-to-T'bird messages but it
> had happened only with T'bird versions 1 and 2 and no longer existed
> with versions 3 and later.
>
> I'm using T'bird version 16. It's happening.
>
> Can any of the techknowledgeable Dixonarians comment/explain?
>
> --Dodi
>

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Dodi Schultz
February 28th, 2014, 01:19 PM
On 2/28/2014 1:47 PM, Paul Keating wrote:
>
> Have you perhaps told Thunderbird to show you only ASCII (or
> equivalently, no HTML)?
>

Nope!

--Dodi

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Dodi Schultz
February 28th, 2014, 01:44 PM
On 2/28/2014 1:53 PM, Dan Widdis wrote:
> The root of the problem is Outlook's autocorrect feature, which replaces
> a typed-out smiley with a single "smiley" character in a substitute font
> (I think it's "Wingdings"). If the recipient's computer does not have the
> matching font, they get the corresponding letter in the default font...
> and that letter happens to be a J.
>
> The easiest fix is for the sender to go into their Outlook settings and
> disable the auto-correcting of smileys.
Interesting. Thank you for the explanation. I don't think she's about to do
that (if she even knows how).

> Alternately, if every recipient of their email were to install the
> Wingdings font on their machine, they could see the cute little smiley
> face that the letter J in that font represents.
Oh! (a) One does that how? (b) Are there other advantages to doing so? (c)
What else will be gummed up if one does that? (There are /never/ any
actions without reactions.)

--Dodi


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Daniel Widdis
February 28th, 2014, 03:07 PM
After research, it looks much more sinister than simply installing a
font (which already exists on Windows machines or on machines that have
installed MS Office).

Turns out Microsoft sends out the HTML containing the font in a
non-standard way (Microsoft likes to think they make standards and don't
have to follow them.) And Thunderbird (as well as Firefox and other
Mozilla products) is very hard set on following the standards. Dozens
of "bug reports" about the J rendering have been turned down as invalid:
essentially, the Thunderbird developers are saying "It's Microsoft's
responsibility to fix their code."

I did stumble on this Thunderbird add-on which looks like it may resolve
the problem for you, though:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/smiley-fixer/


On 2/28/14, 11:44 AM, Dodi Schultz wrote:
> On 2/28/2014 1:53 PM, Dan Widdis wrote:
>> Alternately, if every recipient of their email were to install the
>> Wingdings font on their machine, they could see the cute little
>> smiley face that the letter J in that font represents.
> Oh! (a) One does that how? (b) Are there other advantages to doing so?
> (c) What else will be gummed up if one does that? (There are /never/
> any actions without reactions.)
>

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Dodi Schultz
February 28th, 2014, 04:21 PM
Thank you!

--Dodi

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


On 2/28/2014 4:07 PM, Dan Widdis wrote:
> After research, it looks much more sinister than simply installing a font
> (which already exists on Windows machines or on machines that have
> installed MS Office).
>
> Turns out Microsoft sends out the HTML containing the font in a
> non-standard way (Microsoft likes to think they make standards and don't
> have to follow them.) And Thunderbird (as well as Firefox and other
> Mozilla products) is very hard set on following the standards. Dozens of
> "bug reports" about the J rendering have been turned down as invalid:
> essentially, the Thunderbird developers are saying "It's Microsoft's
> responsibility to fix their code."
>
> I did stumble on this Thunderbird add-on which looks like it may resolve
> the problem for you, though:
> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/smiley-fixer/
>

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Guerri Stevens
March 1st, 2014, 08:48 AM
This is interesting. I also use Thunderbird. In Dodi's original message
I saw the graphic smiley character (i.e. a smiley face). In Paul's
reply, in which he quoted Dodi's message, the quoteback contained the
smiley characters we used in the old days: the colon, dash, and closing
parenthesis.

Guerri
On 2/28/2014 1:47 PM, Paul Keating wrote:
>
> Have you perhaps told Thunderbird to show you only ASCII (or
> equivalently, no HTML)? The J is probably because the smiley is at
> position 74 in whatever font it's in.
>
> On 28 Feb 2014 18:15, "Dodi Schultz" <DodiSchultz (AT) verizon (DOT) net
> <mailto:DodiSchultz (AT) verizon (DOT) net>> wrote:
>
>
> This isn't a major issue, but I'm curious.
>
> I use Thunderbird for e-mail. I believe many of my correspondents
> probably use Outlook. But this particular weirdness occurs only
> with one of them.
>
> If she types the classic smiley characters :-) what I see in her
> message is a capital letter J, although other correspondents of
> hers apparently see it as a graphic smiley; at least they haven't
> told her otherwise.
>
> ...
>

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