Subject: Question about posts on this forumn

From: [email-masked] (Dan Kolis)
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 13:47:48 -0400

Hello,

Does this email reflector pass through plan text attachments to all? I sort
of think its a strength of the odd email community that it gets off topic
*some*. FOr instance I really found the dialog I just got about 3D
teleconferencing interesting and want to post it, but think, Hmmm pretty off
topic.

My preferred solution is a few lines as open text in the body and then a
plain text atatchment.

What it comes down to is the community of people reading this, for example,
are some hardcore technocrats who embrace new technology. All info
technology sooner or later will does or must connect to Internet. Internet,
is all, obviously. So its a temptation to share items which are pretty
tangential.

How about a short post and text attament? Is that cool? I don't want to be
percieved as a weirdo here...

Thanks
Dan

---

From: "Aronson, David" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 14:14:03 -0400

[email-masked] writes:

 > How about a short post and text attament? Is that cool? I 
 > don't want to be percieved as a weirdo here...

Good intent, but bad execution.  Attachments have to be transmitted and
received anyway, plus many mail readers just show text items as if they were
part of the body anyway.  All you'd save anybody is some lines of *display*
of a message, at the expense of making it slightly more difficult for those
who ARE interested to see it.  There is a much better way, which is pretty
much standard for any sort of off-topic discussion, or indeed anything that
may be ON-topic but not of actual use (or sufficient interest to be
worthwhile) to most readers.  (Examples include an executable for a system
that not all the readers use, or a picture when many readers might be on
slow links or text-only systems.)  That method is to put the item on the web
somewhere, and post only a brief description of what it is, and the URL.

-- 
Dave Aronson, Software Engineer, +1-571-434-2039 V, +1-571-434-2001 F.
Cryptek Secure Communications, 1501 Moran Rd., Sterling, VA 20166 USA.
Opinions above are MINE, ALL MINE -- but for rent at reasonable rates.