Question marks inside diamond

Question

Level 1

17 points

Question marks inside diamond

Hello all,
I was trying to find a topic to reply to, but everything with this issue has been archived. So here's a new post. When I send Apple Mail to someone and they reply, my original message is peppered with diamond shapes with a question mark inside. No logical culprit...double space, no... sometimes after a period, sometimes not. Here's a paragraph I screen shot.

http://www.rainbowtech.info/questionmarkd.jpg

I don't know if the receipient sees this or not. Text with these stray symbols doesn't retain them when pasted into a text file. When pasted into Photoshop CD2 with text, they come out as a question mark. They don't paste as a graphic. They don't show up in TextSoap or CleanText.

Whasup? Any ideas?

Shari

Powerbook 17 G4- 1.67 GHz, Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on May 25, 2007 12:25 PM

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Answer 1

May 26, 2007 1:18 AM in response to shariba

...hello, I have the same thing sometimes...usually on French sites where the diamond/? takes the place of an accent...just one of life`s little mysteries, I guess...

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,148 points

May 26, 2007 3:00 AM in response to shariba

When I send Apple Mail to someone
and they reply, my original message is peppered with
diamond shapes with a question mark inside.

Try using Plain Text instead of Rich Text. See this note:

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/woutlook.html

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Answer 3

shariba Author

Level 1

17 points

May 26, 2007 7:11 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks, Tom.

I imagine Plain Text would work. But {{{ stamping foot }}} I want Rich Text. I should be able to use Rich Text if I want - without stray icons. I feel the same way about DS.Store files. But that's another post.

Is there an encoding that is better when sending to people from that Windows world? I have the encoding set to Automatic. I read the linked page. I guess there is, but isn't the real solution for Apple to correct this in Leopard?

Hopefully......

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,148 points

May 26, 2007 8:43 AM in response to shariba

Is there an encoding that is better when sending to
people from that Windows world?

Yes, rich text with uniform UTF-8 encoding.

I read the linked page.

Then you have instructions for Fix B and Fix C to do that.

isn't the real solution for Apple to
correct this in Leopard?

I would not count on it. Apple is a hardware company. How much priority do you think they are likely to give to reprogramming a tiny piece of a tiny piece of what matters to Apple in order accomodate incredibly stupid bugs in a program produced by the word's foremost software company?

If the fixes are not convenient and it's a big problem, best to use another email client like Thunderbird or Entourage.

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