Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2015 July 6

Computing desk
< July 5	<< Jun | July | Aug >>	July 7 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 6

Can iPhone 4s iOS 8.3 be set to receive all email as plain text, rather than html?

My overseas friend with limited email access got the iPhone 4s with iOS 8.3 working finally. The old phone rendered all email in plain text, which is about half the cost of html formatted email, since there is a charge for both data and minute usage. I suggested changing the email provider's settings (as I would with gmail), but apparently that is not possible. Is there a way to change the phone settings itself to accept/render only plain text? (I have googled this and found only the reverse, changing plain text to HTML, and know nothing about iPhones myself.) Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 02:40, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

This is not a feature of the built-in Mail application on iOS. In general, you can't force others to send you mail in your preferred format. At best, you can hope that they will send a multi-part email including a plain-text version; but you still generally need to download the entire message (including all alternate forms), even if you only view the plaintext. Therefore, this view option doesn't reduce your actual download size. And - if the sender doesn't send plain-text - there may be no "smaller" alternative to the HTML-formatted message!

Perhaps other third-party mail applications can provide alternate view options; but I doubt they measurably reduce network traffic.

I find it suspicious that rich text emails are in any possible way relevant to the user's total data usage. In just a few seconds, ordinary web-browsing on many modern websites will downlink thousands of times more data than a full day of sending and receiving HTML-format emails (for normal usage patterns). Are you certain that your friend is addressing the right problem in the effort to reduce data use? This entire effort seems predicated on a misunderstanding of the various orders of magnitude of data used by ordinary internet and email traffic.

Nimur (talk) 03:29, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

@Nimur: agree with everything you wrote. One thing that might make a difference is that HTML emails can include instructions to download and display images from another server. Turning those off could make a noticeable difference to data usage. Download of remote images can easily be switched off in your Mail app's settings. —Noiratsi (talk) 07:07, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

To clarify, Noiratsi, are you saying that I as the sender can switch off the download of remote images, or that the receiver can do this? If so, can you either give instructions or point to a link I can quote? I send via gmail or yahoo and the reciving phone's specs are in the question title. (I have never used a smart phone, and have no idea how any of this works myself.) Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 18:10, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Sender might choose not to send rich email messages, but once the message landed in the receiver's mailbox the sender can do nothing about what the receiver loads. It's the receiver's decision what contents load and what discard (of course if his email software provides an option to decide).

Let me Google that for you.
→ iGeeksBlog.com – Stop Images Loading Automatically in Mail App on iPhone/iPad to Save Data Usage
CiaPan (talk) 20:10, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll pass that link info along (like I said, I did try google but all the results were how to get email to show as html instead of plain text). Apparently emails to this person from Yahoo's old-fashioned setting are coming through as text only. I will try to figure out how to use the slow-connection mode in google by choice, since that is the only time it ever gives me the option of encoding as plain text. μηδείς (talk) 20:19, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Resolved

Monitor view now in portrait instead of landscape

Hi all,

My new little kitten has a tendency to jump up on my desk and press random keys on my keyboard. While that's super-adorable and so on, she has now managed to rotate the monitor display by 90 degrees. The monitor's integrated stand is now located on its left instead of underneath it, as I write this. My monitor now looks like a giant, unwieldy E-reader with cords and stuff connecting it to my agèd PC.

My OS is WinXP, and I have a standard off-the-shelf LCD monitor. Initially I asked Priscilla (for that is my rescue cat's name) to re-set it, as she is obviously far more IT savvy than I am. We talked about this, but she declined to help, as she is currently occupied with ripping up the curtains, taking random naps, and being a purring machine.

I tried Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Display, but I couldn't find any option to turn it 90° back from portrait to landscape. Also tried monkeying around with the monitor's software. No dice with that either.

Tried turning my computer off and turning it on again. The WinXP splash-screen was in landscape format, but as it loaded, everything went back to portrait format.

What am I doing wrong here? --Shirt58 (talk) 12:12, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Have you tried Googling? --CiaPan (talk) 12:43, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Test a key combination Ctrl + Alt + ↑. --CiaPan (talk) 12:46, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

It really should have been in one of the places you looked. Is there an "Advanced options" button ? StuRat (talk) 16:51, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Google says ...well, one of the pages found says, that it should be in screen's properties, not in Control panel/Display (that one is for hardware). Try mouse right-click on the desktop, choose Properties (the last item in the pop-up menu) and look there...
It might also be hidden in some separate program to control the graphic card driver. Try desktop pop-up → Graphics Options... Then for Intel driver a submenu Rotation, then four choices; for ATI card use "Catalyst Control Center", then Displays Manager → Rotation; for Nvidia call Nvidia Control Panel → Rotation (hints from Superuser.com).
See also Microsoft Answers for 'rotate screen windows xp'. --CiaPan (talk) 17:17, 6 July 2015 (UTC)