Dear Rietveld list.

Good to see so many people asking for the list to be continued. And even an
example of an interesting scientific question immediately answered by an
expert. Encouraging.

So why do I forbid "sinful" attachments ? (No, it's not because I'm getting
old and snarky, though we all do eventually :-) Think of the Rietveld list
as a kind of relaxed "Twitter", except that you are not limited to 140
characters. And what about Google's decision this month to favour sites
that can be used on a mobile phone ? Yes, even oldies use mobile phones for
email. SMS is another example of beauty in brevity.

Then the Rietveld Archive is an excellent record of past discussions -
without the attachments. Messages that rely on attachments are then often
incomprehensible - look up that message on
https://www.mail-archive.com/rietveld_l@ill.fr/ Frankly, if you need more
than that, put it on a webserver with a link to it. Such links are
preserved in the archive.

If you see my own warning about "no attachments" as an attachment :-)
perhaps you should check how your email client is set up. Or tell me how I
can do it differently with SYMPA www.sympa.org I didn't design the mail
server nor the mail archive. Clearly, it is difficult to enforce a simple
"no attachments" rule, so what would it be like policing a "small
attachments" rule ? Even if you personally have lots of space for email,
our webserver (for which we don't pay) would still have to distribute ~1500
copies of your "small attachment".

In this particular case, a figure from an unpublished paper was published
and criticised out of context. Is that really fair? If it's from a
referee's copy we shouldn't even refer to it, let alone publish it. If it's
a pre-print, just publish a link to it. But there are already plenty of
examples in the published literature if you are looking for evidence of
regression.

So where are the "Apologies"? There are none :-) "Excuse me" is what people
say when they elbow their way through a crowd. (I only do that when I
really need to). So if you really need to attach a document, go ahead.
After all, you can still read the list on the archive.

Alan
______________________________________________
*   Dr Alan Hewat, NeutronOptics, Grenoble, FRANCE *
<alan.he...@neutronoptics.com> +33.476.98.41.68
        http://www.NeutronOptics.com/hewat
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