I have noticed some past attempts, here and in other newsgroups, to
describe electrical hook-ups or even simple schematics. I say attempts, as they
tried to describe things either in text, or through use of clumsy ASCII
character based line drawing.
I can send an email, with a file as an attachment. This file can be a
graphic created under MS Word 7, with a doc extension, or a graphic from any
number of programs which produce either drg, bmp, tif or jpeg extensions. I
could even zip the file, before attaching, to really crunch down the size.
Now, I don't consider this graphic file usage to be either very exotic
technology or a bandwidth hog. When I dl my email now (granted, through my
company net connection, not a 28.8 modem), each post takes only maybe 1 second;
a typical day's worth of posts rarely takes more than 30 seconds. When I dl
private emails (which often have graphic attachments), I see no appreciable
increase in dl time. If I find an attached file, I can open it with an
associated viewer of a generic viewer, print it, and go back to read the text
while I have the graphic hardcopy in hand.
So, from my viewpoint, I see no burden from allowing attached graphic
files in a remailer or newsgroup, especially if it allows you to convey your
message more accurately.
Are we arbitrarily catering to the oldest common denominator? If you
feel attachments are inappropriate, then what would you propose? What are our
present limits, and why?
--------------------------
Ed Price
[email protected]
Electromagnetic Compatibility Lab
Cubic Defense Systems
San Diego, CA. USA
List-Post: [email protected]
Date: 07/15/97
Time: 11:37:38
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