Tolerance - MIME attachments in ASCII are OK?

On Tuesday, September 16, 1997 1:09 AM, Why is it always 'thin air'? Why

can't it be 'fat air'? 'Mostly fit but could lose a few pounds air'? 
[SMTP:KOCHTE@stsci.edu] wrote:
> Chiming in to kinda echo Sam's sentiments...
>
<snip>
> >> --0-899180149-874210068=:7228
> >> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
> >>
> >> Just in case anyone liked the last one ...
> >
> >Large attachments like this should really be on a web/ftp
> >site with a pointer to its location sent here, I would have
> >thought.
>
> Additionally not everyone can read attachments. I can't. I know people
> on here who won't. I also do not read my email via netscape or any
other
> browser. If you want to share the info with people on here, ought to
> send it in ASCII text.

The attachment was in ASCII text it said so in the header above. There
is a 
BIG difference between ASCII attachments and BINARIES. BINARIES are
banned 
from this list - posting ASCII
is OK? though its good manners to put (long) in the subject header if it
is 
several Kb. Its just some mailers add a supplementary ASCII document as
a 
MIME attachment, others even send the mail message in MIME format. Often
its 
just too much hassle to embedd the document in the message (in MS its
easy to 
drag and drop a file into a message but you get it as a MIME
attachment). 
Often people do this without thinking about it.

I think the vast majority of modern mailers support MIME and its it such

common usage as to be part of the email furniture now. Those without it
(like 
on VMS mail :-) have my condolences but please don't prevent those of us
with 
modern mail systems from using it if the necessity arrives. It you don't
want 
to read it on some strange MIMEophobic or security principle thats fine.
If 
you can't, there are solutions for the MIME challenged, you can get MIME

unpackers even for VMS on the web (munpack).

sincerely
tim jones
--
Its full of stars