Can I send attachments to the list?

Date sent:  18-SEP-1996 14:52:00

No you can't. Go away. 8-)

But seriously, sending LARGE items to the list, especially at term time, puts
the future of this list at jepordy. If you are going to send a large file
attachment (And remember not everyone can read attachments) then do it late at
night (UK time) or send info about the file to people telling
them where to download it, or where to E-mail for it.

There are nearly 200 people on this list, so every message you send gets
duplicated 200 times. This can put quite a strain on our server and can clog
up our mail que for several minutes.

So no, I'm not too keen on file attachments to the list.

> On Wed, 18 Sep 1996, Simon Campbell-Smith wrote:

...something which was probably in an attachment...

It all depends on the format of the attachment. My system cannot read the
VINsomething.DAT files you attach; but I can save them as a separate

file until I find a program able to read them. Well, I could save them if I
managed to find enough disk space...

> On Wed, 18 Sep 1996, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

The WINMAIL.DAT is an little piece of information that gets sent along
with his e-mail messages that is interpreted by other people's WinMail
readers. To those who don't use WinMail, it's as useless,
space-consuming
and pervasive as the "Good Times" virus. (WinMail is EVIL!)

By the way, this is the first time I've seen a Swedish accent typed in a
message rather than spoken :)  (WINMAIL.DAT --> VINMAIL.DAT)

> At 03:00 PM 9/18/96 +0100, Adam Delafield wrote:

Adam, I'd go one step further and say NO attachments on the list. It's
against "netiquette" to post binary attachments to non-binary
newsgroups; I think the same courtesy should apply here.

> On Wed, 18 Sep 1996, Rick Rutherford wrote:

> By the way, this is the first time I've seen a Swedish accent typed in

Well, since the attachment didn't show up in the reply I forgot quite a
lot of the letters in the name - I wrote VINsomething.DAT, not
VINMAIL.DAT!

<vbg>

> In message <009A88FA.986B9617.102@basil.acs.bolton.ac.uk> you wrote:

> Date sent: 18-SEP-1996 14:52:00

I'd say definitely no binaries, for the simple reason that some of us have to
pay for our phone bills (and Demon seem to be very slow
at dispatching email, downloading a file via ftp is _much_ quicker
than downloading the same file over email).

If you have a binary, I'd say post a pointer to an ftp site/web site
where it can be found. People who aren't interested, don't have to go and
download it.

Of course Simon, you could always borrow a bit of space on my web site if you
wanted to (as long as it's politically correct (ie slags off the ESU at least
three times)).

oh, and can't you switch off that bloody winmail.dat file? I printed out the
Dirtside II email you sent me, and I ended up with an entire side of A4 full
of gibberish! Use uuencode instead (but not on text!).

Date sent:  20-SEP-1996 08:52:56

> So no, I'm not too keen on file attachments to the list.

> Adam, I'd go one step further and say NO attachments on the list. It's

> Allan

OK. For those of you who didn't understand my previous message, if anyone
sends binaries to the list, I'll kick you off it.

> At 07:55 AM 9/20/96 +0000, you wrote:
     So--he said, realizing he wouldn't make himself look any
smarter--what's a binary? And what do they do that's so bad?

     James

Date sent:  20-SEP-1996 09:36:40

> So no, I'm not too keen on file attachments to the list.

> Adam, I'd go one step further and say NO attachments on the list.
It's
> against "netiquette" to post binary attachments to non-binary

> Allan

> OK. For those of you who didn't understand my previous message, if

> So--he said, realizing he wouldn't make himself look any

> James

What is a Binary?

E-mail works on 7 bit transmission, which is quite sufficient for ASCII
transmission, however to send additional information, you have to go up to 8
bits. You have to encode the 8 bit as 7 bit to send this through
E-mail. Some E-mail systems do this automatically. Others simply can't
do it at all. Most are somewhere inbetween. 7-bit can only be plain
ASCII text. 8 bit (AKA binary) can be anything. Word Processor documents,
Spreadsheets, Pictures, Sound, Anything. Lost you yet?

What do they do that's so bad.

They are BIG. In the world of E-mail, big is bad. It takes longer to
process, longer to send (and I have to send it nearly 200 times) and longer to
download from a mail server. Even an ASCII file sent in binary format is one
eighth longer than the ASCII equivilant, and pictures, sound etc are big
enough as it is, without making them any bigger.

They are non standard. There is no garuntee that the person you send to will
be able to convert it back to the original format, and then there is no
garuntee that they can read the original format anyway (Try sending a
WordPerfect 6.0 file to a WordPerfect 5.2 user.).

They bounce a lot. Because of their larger size, they 'time out' more often
than standard ASCII text. Some Mail Servers throw a wobbler at some of the
characters used for encoding. End result is I get 15 to 20 bounced errors for
every binary sent. I don't like that.

So in short, 1.) People don't like spending a long time downloading something
they won't be able to read anyway. 2.) I don't like bounced errors. 3.) It
slows basils mail que down.

James wrote
--So--he said, realizing he wouldn't make himself look any
--smarter--what's a binary? And what do they do that's so bad?

A binary is a file in machine readable form - ususally a GIF image file
of a program.EXE file. These are usually MUCH larger that ASCII text files and
can be several megabytes. The problem is the size the mail server has to store
the things and then send them out so it saturates the network bandwidth,
things slow down and people doing real work ask the sys admin guy why...?