Re: Tolerance - MIME attachments in ASCII are OK?

In message <01BCC27E.0830B950@Tim.Jones@smallworld.co.uk>
	  Tim Jones <Tim.Jones@Smallworld.co.uk> wrote:

> The attachment was in ASCII text it said so in the header above.

Actually it wasn't, well, okay it was, in the sense that
the result of base64 encoding is ASCII, but it wasn't
readable ASCII. If it really was a plain ASCII file originally,
then for some reason it had been encoded.

But anyway, it was more the size rather than the encoding
I was mildly objecting to.

> 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.

Everything I've ever used supports uuencode. I've never come
across a base64 decoder which works hassle free (on either
UNIX or RISC OS).

But anyway,

People generally don't like binaries because they tend to
be big. I'd rather receive a 5K binary than a 500K plain
text file.

The internet is a multi-platform environment, and it helps
to (gently and politely) remind (typically PC) users of
this now and again (and it's better for them as well,
since more people will be able to read their ideas).

The odd few unreadable/difficult to read/large files I
have no objection to. The problem is when people start
posting such items as a matter of course, because no-one
objected when they did it the first time.

I'd just like people to think a bit before posting large
files (binary or otherwise), about whether it really
needs to be posted, or is something that could be put on
an ftp/web site, and a pointer posted instead.

Having said that, I'll now shut up on the subject.
Thankyou for your consideration.

-- 
Be seeing you,
Sam.