Subject Re: formatting messages in the NG From Gaetano D. <gaetanodd@hotmail.com> Date Thu, 4 Feb 2021 17:07:00 +1000 Newsgroups dbase.getting-started Hi Lee, I did find a way to get what I needed without impacting users of the web pages: 1. go to account settings (right-click new.dbase.com - settings) and tick the compose in HTML format 2. in the Tools-Options menu, click the send options and tick the "send as plain text if possible) 3. just under the previous option, set the drop-down box to "convert to plain text" 4. still in that same screen, click the Plain text domains tab and add news.dbase.com (to force conversion in point 3) Now you can compose with the full width of the display. You could use HTML tags but not everyone will be able to read that format, so refrain from using the HTML formatting and surround words with asterisks to highlight them in bold. At least Thunderbird and perhaps other news readers use that same syntax to format plain text. this is in *bold* using asterisks, it has no effect on the web news page but in Thunderbird you should see that in bold. Cheers, Gaetano. On 4/02/2021 14:04, Lee Grant wrote: > Gaetano, > > No. :) > > If you check the Help for Thunderbird, you'll find that only using > HTML mode allows you to treat messages in response, as if they were in > a word processor.  Plain Text, no. Sorry. I looked for a Margins > reference and there was none. I do know when I type messages in this > message, it shows only showing about half the screen, and when posted, > it actually takes up more of the screen, and I've tried looking at > options for each and find nothing, which is why I searched the Help > Documentation and found nothing. > > If you happen to find something that disproves my research on the > subject, I'm open to looking at it. :) > > Lee > > On 2/2/2021 3:26 PM, Gaetano D. wrote: >> >> Hi All, >> >> I use Thunderbird as news reader and I was looking for a way to use >> bold fonts to *highlight *parts of my messages and for a way to use >> the full width of the window when typing messages. >> >> The only way I found is to switch to HTML format. Two questions in >> this respect: >> >>  1. is there any limitation on using HTML on the dBase newsgroups? >>  2. is there a way to use simple formatting in plain text mode >>     (bold/underline/italics) and to make Thunderbird use the full width >>     of the screen when composing text messages? >> >> Thanks, >> >> Gaetano. >> >