Description

OE-QuoteFix will extend the functionality of MS Outlook Express in numerous ways! Its main purpose is to modify message composition windows on-the-fly to allow for correct quoting and to change the appearance of your plain-text replies and forwards in general: move your signature, use compressed indentation, have RFC compliant signatures, etc.
But the second feature is equally practical: OE-QuoteFix can instantly color quoted passages (according to the level of indentation), fix bad quoting and generally beautify messages as you view them in Outlook Express.

Quoting & Formatting

If you use Outlook Express as your mail/news client and make use of plain-text messages (which are still the way to go, especially in the usenet), you will have noticed that OE doesn't exactly feature the most intelligent quoting algorithm; in fact, it's the silliest one imaginable.

The following will probably look familiar...

This is a simple sample text, and as you will see, Outlook Express is going to wrap this line. I've always hated that! And one night I said to myself, "It can't go on like this". And so I wrote OE-QuoteFix... -- Dominik Jain http://flash.to/oblivion "Dominik Jain" wrote in message news:aip4ds$16emin$1@ID-123896.news.dfncis.de... > This is a simple sample text, and as you will see, Outlook Express is going > to wrap this line. I've always hated that! And one night I said to myself, > "It can't go on like this". And so I wrote OE-QuoteFix... > > -- > Dominik Jain > http://flash.to/oblivion > "Dominik Jain" wrote in message > news:aip4cd$15eofi$1@ID-123896.news.dfncis.de... > > This is a simple sample text, and as you will see, Outlook Express is > going > > to wrap this line. I've always hated that! And one night I said to myself, > > "It can't go on like this". And so I wrote OE-QuoteFix... > > > > -- > > Dominik Jain > > http://flash.to/oblivion > > > > >

Now, what is wrong with this posting?

• Horribly broken quotes - line breaks in several wrong places!
• OE basically forced the poster to do a top-post, because the signature was inserted at the top and the cursor is always positioned there, too
• Signatures were not stripped automatically on reply. They would have to be deleted manually!
• Signatures are not RFC compliant - no space after the dashes!
• Empty lines at the end of the message were quoted.
• The attribution lines are too long and cannot be modified for a 'personal touch'. Email headers are even worse!
• Line breaks missing between the signature and the quoted message.

BUT... It doesn't have to be that way. OE-QuoteFix fixes all of the above - and more! The following is an example of how the above message dialog could have looked with OE-QuoteFix:

Dominik Jain <djain@web.de> posted: > Dominik Jain <djain@web.de> posted: >> This is a simple sample text, and as you will see, Outlook Express is >> going to wrap this line. I've always hated that! And one night I said to >> myself, "It can't go on like this". And so I wrote OE-QuoteFix... > > This is a simple sample text, and as you will see, Outlook Express is > going to wrap this line. I've always hated that! And one night I said to > myself, "It can't go on like this". And so I wrote OE-QuoteFix... This is a simple sample text, and as you will see, Outlook Express is going to wrap this line. I've always hated that! And one night I said to myself, "It can't go on like this". And so I wrote OE-QuoteFix... --  Dominik Jain http://flash.to/oblivion

And the best thing about OE-QuoteFix is, there is absolutely nothing you have to do. It's all done automatically. You click reply and OE-QuoteFix will immediately reformat the message for proper quoting! No message you send is ever going to look like the one in the example at the top again... And if you get all your friends to use this program, too, such messy quotes will soon become the exception to the rule. And even if you don't, OE-QuoteFix will attempt to fix all their messy quotes when you reply to their messages, plus you can use the 'Reformat' feature to correct the formatting of other people's messages as you view them (see below)!

Background Knowledge

When you click reply, all OE does is add '> ' (or something else depending on your settings) to the beginning of each line. And while you are editing, it all looks fine... The problem arises when you click send, because OE then begins the add line breaks wherever the line length exceeds a given value (usually around 72-80) and if the original message already contained lines with that same maximum line length, adding the '> ' becomes fatal. Outlook Express will leave the '> ' where they were, reformatting doesn't take place, and, you guessed it, you get messed up quotes... OE-QuoteFix prevents this by using a more sophisticated algorithm, which ensures that the given linelength is not exceeded right from the start, including the quote characters.

Viewing: Coloring & more...

Whenever you view a plain-text message in Outlook Express, OE-QuoteFix will color the different levels of quoting automatically.
The sample message above then looks like this (all colors are adjustable, of course):

Dominik Jain <djain@web.de> posted: > Dominik Jain <djain@web.de> posted: >> This is a simple sample text, and as you will see, Outlook Express is >> going to wrap this line. I've always hated that! And one night I said to >> myself, "It can't go on like this". And so I wrote OE-QuoteFix... >  > This is a simple sample text, and as you will see, Outlook Express is > going to wrap this line. I've always hated that! And one night I said to > myself, "It can't go on like this". And so I wrote OE-QuoteFix... This is a simple sample text, and as you will see, Outlook Express is going to wrap this line. I've always hated that! And one night I said to myself, "It can't go on like this". And so I wrote OE-QuoteFix... --  Dominik Jain http://flash.to/oblivion

And that's not all. OE-QuoteFix can furthermore attempt to fix badly quoted messages as you view them.
Even the first example message - with all the messy quoting - will then look much more readable:

This is a simple sample text, and as you will see, Outlook Express is going to wrap this line. I've always hated that! And one night I said to myself, "It can't go on like this". And so I wrote OE-QuoteFix... -- Dominik Jain http://flash.to/oblivion "Dominik Jain"  wrote in message news:aip4ds$16emin$1@ID-123896.news.dfncis.de... > This is a simple sample text, and as you will see, Outlook Express is > going to wrap this line. I've always hated that! And one night I said to > myself, "It can't go on like this". And so I wrote OE-QuoteFix... >  > -- > Dominik Jain > http://flash.to/oblivion > "Dominik Jain"  wrote in message > news:aip4cd$15eofi$1@ID-123896.news.dfncis.de... >> This is a simple sample text, and as you will see, Outlook Express is >> going to wrap this line. I've always hated that! And one night I said to >> myself, "It can't go on like this". And so I wrote OE-QuoteFix... >>  >> -- >> Dominik Jain >> http://flash.to/oblivion

Moreover, OE-QuoteFix can show emoticons, such as :) or ;), using images. Plus, implied font styles like *bold* can be shown in the intended way (bold)...

No Worries

Lastly, OE-QuoteFix will not modify any system files or Outlook Express files... And the changes it makes to your messages can be undone by choosing Edit->Undo in Outlook Express, should you realize that they weren't what you wanted. And if you don't like OE-QuoteFix at all, you can always uninstall it, but I'm sure you won't want to... ;)