Hello to all who didn't delete,

        (And, again my apologies to those, like me, who are on the di-
     gest and didn't have a delete choice).  I am a computer/technical
     instructor  by trade and I tend to go overboard (more than) a bit
     in technical explanations On  Sat,  27  Nov  1999,  SIR  JAMES1st
     <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>                                                                ... What =
> I thought you said was, when some attachments aren't sent right they =
> come out as code on the other end ...
> Also if you wouldn't mind, what the h_ll is a,"MIME-encoded post" ...

        Your  understanding  is correct.  All communication on the In-
     ternet relies on a "protocol" to ensure that a message  will  get
     transferred completely and accurately to its destination.  A pro-
     tocol is nothing more than one computer saying "are  you  there?"
     to another computer, the other computer replying "yes, I am, send
     the first packet."  A packet is nothing more than a collection of
     information  that  contains  a portion of the intended communica-
     tion.  The two computers use the "protocol" to send the "packets"
     until the transfer has been completed correctly.

        You may have seen a Web URL starting out with "http://www ..."
     (most browsers don't require the http:// anymore -- it is usually
     the default).  The http stands for "Hyper Text Transfer Protocol"
     and is the "protocol" used on the World Wide Web.  E-mail, on the
     other hand, uses a different "protocol" called SMTP --Simple Mail
     Transport Protocol

        The "simple" in SMTP really says it all.  This simple protocol
     is a *text-based* protocol.  All e-mail messages must be text  or
     the message cannot be "transport"ed.  The SMTP protocol says that
     all e-mail messages must start with a blank line  followed  by  a
     nonblank  line that must start out with "From " and continues un-
     til the next occurrence of two adjacent lines  that  contain  the
     exact  same text.  *Everything* in between must be text. (This is
     why you will see the word "From" at the beginning of a line  pre-
     ceded  by  a  ">" -- the mailer is trying to ensure that it isn't
     interpreted as the beginning of a new message.)

        In  the  "modern" world of today's Internet, it quickly became
     obvious that people wanted to send more than just  text.   So,  a
     method  was  created  in  which  binary  files -- images, sounds,
     movies, etc. -- could be included in an e-mail.  Since all e-mail
     had  to  be  text,  the "method" was to turn the binary file into
     text data.  This "method" is usually called encoding and used  to
     use  something  uuencode  but more recently uses something called
     MIME (Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions).  The  major  draw-
     back  to  these  encoding methods is that the text version of the
     data is usually bigger than the binary form.

        And  this  didn't  seem  to  be enough to satisfy all Internet
     users.  Still other people wanted to be able to include the  same
     types  of things that you see on a Web page -- fonts,  hyper-text
     links, headings, images, and the like -- in their e-mail messages
     as  well.   So in addition to the binary file encodings, a method
     was established to include HTML (Hyper Text Markup  Language)  in
     an  e-mail  message as well.  And the MIME mechanism was extended
     to allow for it.

        Most  e-mail users use an e-mail client (a program that commu-
     nicates with a server using a protocol) that understands and  au-
     tomatically  interprets  MIME  in  their  e-mail  messages.  But,
     *many* people don't!  There are still a *large* number of  Inter-
     net  users  who  prefer  to send and receive their e-mail in text
     format.  This means that GIF,  JPEG,  and  the  like  attachments
     don't  get decoded; this means that HTML doesn't get interpreted.
     People who use the standard  UNIX  mail  clients  like  mail  and
     mailx,  or  other clients such as pine, elm and many, many others
     will see:

     ------=_NextPart_000_0340_01BF389F.F55AFE40
     Content-Type: text/html;
             charset="iso-8859-1"
     Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

     [!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"]
     [HTML][HEAD]
     [META content=3D"text/html; charset=3Diso-8859-1" =
     http-equiv=3DContent-Type]
     [META content=3D"MSHTML 5.00.2614.3500" name=3DGENERATOR]
     [STYLE][/STYLE]
     [/HEAD]
     [BODY bgColor=3D#ffffff]
     [DIV][FONT face=3DArial size=3D3]Bill,[/FONT][/DIV]
     [DIV]&nbsp;[/DIV]
     [DIV][FONT face=3DArial size=3D3]&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Not being very =
     technical I=20
     didn't fully understand your note. What I thought you said was, when =
     some=20
     attachments aren't sent right they come out as code on the other end. =
     I've had=20
     ...

        Where the sender actually saw:

     Bill,

     Not being very technical I didn't fully understand your note.
     What I thought you said was, when some attachments aren't sent right
     they come out as code on the other end.  I've had ...

        And, where some people see:

R0lGODlheABLAPUAAICAgOZaY//NMfytDP7hVMCBEOs3EP6uLe9SLOM/M/FQEssZDGNWNFNEFTAn
BFAtBHA0A3NIDfqPDtNoBPtpU/xxKM8vEIszA9FpIM9RCa5UBPFxDNhEN49GArc+Q7UsC/qTKetk
arpiDKdJL5YcI9haYOpWU/qmTcs0Mso7QqsdI7EqME1EPNJKT6ONd86fhakUEGkeIo8JDEsfIFAM
BnEICpItLW4rK08pKC0MApNiXK6eiW5bUTcwLQAAAAAAACH/C05FVFNDQVBFMi4wAwEAAAAh+QQF
DwAAACwAAAAAeABLAAUG/0CfcEgsGo/IpHLJbDqf0Kh0Sq1ar9isdsvter/gYi9MLkd5Y7N6fdyx
3+8dD04v6+b1vJeny+n/Rjl+UDg3NjU3N4BaaVI5NDQzg0w5hzIyNTSKi1d4UI+XNTUxm0o5NZep
iJOcUzs4nzSpmJl9SacyMLOYNK1Tgi8uN6xKsru0NzzEPjSouy2hLL5OgpCiMqQ0y4JDxsehmpOP
zqoyKzAqNdzTlM3XoaKZ1tfx5N+08vYwus7omcPs2tm7d0nFrngEMR3TpfCSLkjLAgaqd8yewYIM
yzVMeCmFChT8IGmTaGqgKn0GV5zjuDCVChUtVKRQKQoiyVsm4Z3w9m1fxv+e5lKZkPHRXAkS8iLe
9IHr3ogTIhB+uwjU4aUV0GCiWBECGkSlJJveOwHiQypd+87+zJg2l0EVK4iqKNECq4dM65YSEVtR
RIdZPtP+tKrWagoOMOLKTOGhBF6wEk+92/guLVWfLXNpxvzy5dYWKVp4sKENckDJqFLTcziYpYwP
bM3CgL2CAwrbJmiW1rt38knAZ6vm2vdhwwYNGTCIuID8woUPI8xayGDWJm8hqENtdM0Q7b4MIIyL
0CBevIjxGC5UqECB9MjrTFPP8u1a8yXwxjf4zZ9/goQT6Rk3wlfwxZcTS2yhJUMG/BlHXoMb/BcB
BMapg0NevElWX0/EZVD/wXEPGgcVBhBucAIENYxwgSCmnXYgdx8U96GIIpBInQgx5peBBmZdIBKB
Bca3oX0xXtBgBRhwoN1w9l1iFj5AFsjXPQkWl94E/MGmi0oqYNbkSV+1yM6UHBWXnwg6smZVdwfF
E6aY05CZ0IzGYXBCBhYEB1yT9YjEIpxx0rcndCGa+KSCCyHap58sBomdVN98gEEFJ3SQH2xqanRP
TRC96aiQTo0wKQYjoKJlRfUg9A6nnZaGIXzNJCToQbQ0Y407qX41zCO8vpphTvxw1Kc8b/7oag67
/umrXmJ5ZwEFF8jK6pvKVptDDLsxs+xSuKrFoI+45vqjtdxYyxS2e/Ea/2S4qVipDovGGkuuOEz5
Ye8NvQxRDaCcuNkMBB2M0EEEx85rMFP1EgNJuttG5u8DNETwAMQsOuBAueRiZy7CRCysb6OwcppD
BBZfXHHJHCesrL7tFOHHDAW6A1EDJV98YQ4X13tLFI8c0XCgxNJAs8W9/ukAFznAHAi/ekgG0QMO

        The sender actually saw a "pretty picture."

> ...
>  it the sender or the receiver doesn't have the right program ...

        Actually,  it's  neither.   Some  people  prefer  to  use mail
     clients that "do it all."  They send and receive e-mail with  all
     of  the MIME "bells and whistles" included.  Others prefer to use
     a text-based client and use other programs to view images, listen
     to sounds, and to play movies.

        The bottom line is really simple.  If you want the widest pos-
     sible audience to be able to read your e-mail messages  with  the
     fewest complaints, you send a text-based message.  If you have an
     image, sound, or movie you want to share,  you  tell  the  person
     that you're sending the message to that it's available and can be
     sent to them in a separate message if they are interested.

>                                                            ... As you my =
> or may not know I have a habit of sending small attachments and I try =
> not to send the reply to waste space. Is there a clean way to send gifs? ...

        I won't try to force my opinion on you -- I am *very* opinion-
     ated about e-mail. :-)  But, I think that most of the  above  ex-
     planation will answer this question.

        As  to including the reply, the reply -- depending on how many
     levels of quotes within quotes within quotes there are -- may ac-
     tually  take up *less* space than a GIF image.  And, most readers
     actually prefer a *little* snippet of the original  message  that
     you  are  replying to so that they have a context in which to un-
     derstand your reply.

>                                                                ... And =
> what do you mean by "being on the digest" ...

        Almost  every  mailing list on the 'Net comes in two versions.
     The regular version -- sometimes called the "bounce back" version
     --  takes  each  and  every  message that comes into the list and
     bounces it back to each and every subscriber on  the  list.   The
     digest  version, on the other hand, saves up several messages and
     sends the group in bulk when some size or  time  limit  has  been
     reached.   On  the Parkinson's mailing list, it is not at all un-
     usual to get four or five digests in a day and each one  will  be
     anywhere from 20,000 characters to 60,000 characters long.

        If a person belongs to more than one mailing list (at times, I
     have been known to belong to as many as five or six), it  becomes
     a  major effort to sift through the hundreds of messages that ap-
     pear in your mailbox.  For these types of people, it is much more
     convenient  to get a batch of messages all at once -- in a digest
     -- to scan through the messages at their leisure.  Again, on  the
     Parkinson's  list, it is not unusual to have anywhere from two to
     thirty messages in a single digest.

>                                        ... Won't you take a moment to =
> help out a simple minded soul ...

        As  is  my nature -- as many folks on this and other lists can
     attest -- I have taken more than a moment.  But, again as  is  my
     nature  (being  a  teacher  by profession), I sincerely hope that
     this long-winded explanation might help just one list-member have
     a  better  understanding why text messages are best and why unso-
     licited binary attachments are generally frowned upon.

        (I  won't  extend this any further by explaining why my signa-
     ture uses only text characters and must be displayed in  a  mono-
     spaced font to be "seen." :-) )

        Take  care,  thanks for "listening," and (as I have been known
     to say in closing a note) always grok in fullness ...

Bill--
  ...who, if at first he doesn't succeed, redefines success.
.___. William A. ....._..._ .......7177 Heritage Drive+--------- (42?) --+
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