Re: [WinMac] Re: HTML,MIME,PLAIN TEXT,BASE64 ETC.:bottom line please!

John Droggitis(johnd[at]cybernex.net)
Wed, 27 Oct 1999 09:44:54 +0000

Tom Roth wrote:

> "Robert F. Crean" wrote:
> >
> > Both Bruce Johnson and Leonard Rosenthol kindly responded to my question
> > about all of different options for sending Email and attachments. Thank
> > You!
> >
> > Now, how about a bottom line? We send and receive email and lots of jpeg
> > photos. Thats it.
> >
> > If I set up ALL copies of OE and Netscape (both platforms) to send email
> > using plain text, and for attachments, Base 64, and where possible ask our
> > clients to do the same, will that work? I mean is that the thing to do?
>
> We receive a lot of files daily and we always try to encourage our
> clients to NOT use email. Attached files to email have to be encoded
> and then decoded and of course email was designed to send plain text
> messages, not huge binary files. Now I don't mind getting a small file
> via email but when there's a lot of them or they are large 2MB or
> greater then FTP is really the way to go.

Absolutely correct. Email was NOT meant to be a way of transferring large
files... a lot of times it doesn't even work, because you may encounter relays
that have upper size limitations for the messages that pass through them. An
FTP drop box, perhaps with a web front-end is the way to go. Besides being
more reliable, this way does not force your recepients to download the large
files if they don't want to(pull versus push). Too many times I've sat and
waited while netscape downloaded a useless email message with a 1M attachment
over a dialup connection, without an option to skip it or delete it at the
server.

So keep your emails simple... include URLs to point to more complex
information. Upgrade your wu-ftpd to 2.6.0 since every script kiddie in the
world now knows that it's vulnerable.

--John

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