Thank you, 2handband, I did see the other posts just after (naturally) I last posted. The question about the day-headers was well settled.

But my experience is that the setting for HTML you point to just governs how the messages are displayed in the message pane. So far as I have been able to tell, my messages are still sent in plain text, and I can't find anything to change that.

For the record, Ubuntu 9.10 apparently uses KDE 4.3.5 while KMail is version 1.12.4. With versions constantly changing and not necessarily backported, it is hard to be certain what's what.

Thanks for your help!
Joe

Selecting prefer html does change your sent messages. You'll notice, for example, that without that selected formatting options like bold or italics text don't actually go into your sent messages, but after selecting that option they do.

Again, thanks for your time. I'll look at it some more.

Whenever I forward HTML messages with links to my wife or my sister, they seem to get to her as plain text, no matter how I've set that option. Then they wrap, and the links don't work, so something else is going on, no doubt. Of course, there's my wife's settings entering in this as well, only, I don't expect she's done anything to XP OOB. (Sister uses a Mac.)

I do have it set for HTML since any HTML that comes in shows with markup if I don't. When I viewed source on my messages, they're all plain text, but I didn't try putting icons into them, or such. So I'll try forcing it with an icon.

Thank you,
Joe

2handband wrote:Thanks, but you misunderstand. you know how your messages are separated by what day they were sent? My wife wants that gone, and I don't see an option to do that.

i dunno the English word for it, but you should go to menu [view » messages list» aggregation] and then choose something like [standard discussion group]

(that is in kde 4.4, in kde 4.3 you should search for that option in one of the icons in the top right corner of the messages list)

Thank you everyone, and Riinse, I now see to what you were referring--I was looking on the KMail menu bar, and the 'Options' to which you referred is on the 'New Message Window' menu bar, and does indeed make it possible to send a message as HTML. That immediately provides the emoticons and everything now works! Evidently I'm getting more than a little blind and slow in my dotage.

Thanks for your patience!
Joe