John Chambers wrote:
I'd just like to kill the makers of Eudora for setting the default settings of their mail software to UUencode attachments but still send them out with the original mime-type. My boss would send me stuff via eudora all the time.. say a word doc... download it.. open it in word (hey. the mime-type & extension are correct) only to see a 644 begin line. Have to ftp it up to unix, uudecode, ftp it back and then open it.Christian M. Cepel writes: | John Chambers wrote: | | >Since ABC is widely used to send tunes via email, ABC ends up being | >embedded inside messages in lots of other formats. It's fairly common | >for this to garble the ABC, as the encoding software is usually | >debugged only with ordinary (English) text. ... | Ran into this nonsense mailing a gal a php proggie I had written for her | to convert medline source references into CSV txt file... | | She (unfortunately everyone on campus who doesn't know any better) is | using exchange. Finally had to send her a zip. | | <?php | | and so on and so forth.
Yeah; in this list we notice how email software damages ABC, but it's a well-known problem in most programming languages. Back before 1990, when most email software was written by programmers for programmers, it was less common (though it did happen). But then the commercial folks jumped onto this new Internet thing, and they decided to scrap all that techie stuff and write "user-friendly" software. The results were generally programmer-hostile.
It effects everyone who tries to use email to send anything that is formatted differently from English. In ABC, a string like A2B4c2 will be treated as six tokens by most "intelligent" email software, and newlines may be inserted anywhere. When one is inserted before one of the numbers, the result usually doesn't work correctly, since most ABC software doesn't know what to do with a number at the start of a line/staff.
But this has been at least a minor headache for programmers since we first had email back in the 70's. Despite attempts to make email standards that prevent such damage, the problem is probably worse now than ever.
What's funny is all the software that wraps lines at 80 or 72 chars. This is referred to in the literature as the symptom of a "punch card mind". How many computer users nowadays have ever seen or used a punch card? I have a couple in a box as souvenirs. That 72 is especially bizarre. How many people these days could even tell you where that strange number comes from? But lots of software does it.
I guess you could call it a tradition ...
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-- ||
Christian Marcus Cepel | And the wrens have returned & [EMAIL PROTECTED] icq:12384980 | are nesting; In the hollow of 371 Crown Point, Columbia, MO | that oak where his heart once 65203-2202 573.999.2370 | had been; And he lifts up his Computer Support Specialist, Sr. | arms in a blessing; For being University of Missouri-Columbia | born again. --Rich Mullins
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