ml>> the smiley is the proper character... it may be your editor or it may
 ml>> be something else... can you check the raw reply packet before
 ml>> uploading? manually unzip it or whatever and look at the files with
 ml>> LIST.COM and see what you see... there will be other binary stuff but

 DC> I don't have LIST.COM on my system.

you can download an eval version from www.buerg.com or i can make an older
shareware version available for you to get off my site... it is an
invaluable tool...

 DC> I tried it in FileFind

i dunno anything about FileFind... what is that?

 DC> but it was all compressed.  Using RAR didn't provide me with
 DC> anything that looked like a kludge header.

understandable if you didn't uncompress the reply file that you reader
creates... i haven't done off line stuff in a while but you would manually
uncompress the file that you upload to the bbs and look thru the file in
that stuff that contains the messages you wrote...

 ml>> you're only interested in the one you type so make a special
 ml>> "locator" for yourself... maybe something like this...
 ml>> testing CTRL-A character '^a'

 DC> I found some of those in FF, but the format was not readable
 DC> enough to figure out what they work with.

sounds like you didn't uncompress it...

[messing with multimail]

ok, i uncompressed the .REP packet and there is only one MSG file inside
it... that's where i looked and i do see the characters as desired... the
main thing is to figure out if the ones you are putting in are actually
staying in...

in this multimail that i'm using, it is using the DOS EDIT program... in
that editor, i have to hit CTRL-P and then CTRL-A to put the smiley face
in... when i looked in the MSG file, it was there as intended...

)\/(ark