Brian - obviously, you have unlimited time and unlimited funds to get all
the latest stuff; or your institution provides all this stuff for you.
You need to understand that many of us have limited time and funds, and
work for institutions whose connectivity and ability to provide technical
support are almost non-existent.
The purpose of e-mail is to communicate. Why continue to encourage
others to send stuff in formats that require extra work to decode, if one
even has access to the special coding? My general response to such
messages is to delete them, whether or not my own system has the
capability.
Tim Edlund, Morgan State University
On Sat, 15 Aug 1998, Brian Harmer wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Aug 1998 15:41:35 -0600, in Daniel Booth <
Daniel@BOOTHCO.COM>
> wrote:
>
> >In Gary Wallace's recent post, he added an attachment. Surely none of
> >us were able to read it, but had to page down through 100's of rows of
> >meaningless characters.
>
> None of us?
> I certainly could and did. And my browser just showed the attachment as an
> icon at the bottom of a brief carrier message.
>
> >Virus? I doubt it, unless email illiteracy is a disease.
> Do you always make such strong assertions on such little evidence? My virus
> checker picked it up too, and dealt with it.
>
> >I get
> >episodes of it daily as I use the wrong protocol with different clients.
>
> I can't help wondering whether you need a more flexible mail package.
>
> >Please, everyone, don't even try to insert/attach a document. There is
> >no compatibility in the email world when it comes to attachments.
>
> Surely we can't accept this "locked in time by yesterday's packages"
> approach. Almost everybody using Netscape, Outlook Express, Internet
> Explorer, Agent, Pegasus, Eudora etc and all the common email packages
> should have no difficulty.
>
> >If you have info that you can't paste as text to your post, here are
> >some list-user friendly options:
> >1. Give us an FTP site
> >2. Add it to your web site
> >3. Go to the trouble of writing a little summary
> >4. Offer to mail it.
>
> Those are all good suggestions with which I agree.
> Most reputable online journals actively encourage attached files usually in
> word format. I really don't see the problem unless the attachment is a
> massive binary.
> >
> >There are just too many different email protocols, such as BINHEX,
> >UUEncode, MIME, etc.
>
> Any halfway competent email package has no trouble with any of those.
>
> regards
>
>
> --
> Brian Harmer
> "Our luck is even better than I expected Don Quixote exclaimed
> ... I'm going to attack those mighty giants and slay them in their tracks" - Cervantes
>
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~bharmer/
>