I agree with Patrick. Many email systems don't handle attachments very well,
even inside the same organization!

When Fritz Waidacher, Jan Sas and I put our bibliography on evaluation,
visitor studies, market research and performance measurement on the CWM
website last year, we included low level MS Word (2.0), Wordperfect (5.x)
AND ASCII versions. I haven't looked at the hits lately, but I am sure it is
the overwhelming favourite as it is the easiest to retrieve - and isn't ease
of communication what the Internet is supposed to be all about?

Harry

Harry Needham
Special Advisor - Programme Development
Canadian War Museum
330 Sussex Drive,
Ottawa, Canada
K1A 0M8
Voice: (819) 776-8612  Fax (819) 776-8623
Email: [log in to unmask]

> ----------
> From:         Boylan P[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Reply To:     Museum discussion list
> Sent:         Thursday, July 16, 1998 1:53 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      UNREADABLE ATTACHMENTS
>
> I agree that the rather sarcastic comment from Ann was discourteous - but
> mailing Word (or similar) "attachments" to the List is at least as
> discourteous, if not worse. For the record, I couldn't read it either, and
> this was not due to any sort of "bad luck" as you imply.
>
> Over the months (and years) there have been several appeals asking
> everyone to post their full text only in the main body of the message in
> clear and universally readable ASCII text (or ISO text for those using
> European fonts).
>
> Very many email systems (an increasing number, I believe) will not open
> attachments - not least for security reasons.  My access is through one
> of the most powerful university networks in London - running at 4Gbits,
> not a 16K or 32K modem - but I didn't receive your attachment either. As
> policy, following bitter experience with both hacking attempts and virus
> transmissions, all binary attachments are intercepted by our firewall.
>
> It only takes a few second longer to save a Word (or similar) document
> as ASCII and insert this in the body of the message so that everyone can
> read it.
>
> Patrick Boylan
>
> ==========================
>
> On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, John Nichols wrote:
>
> > Ann:
> >
> > Your rude comments were very misguided and unprofessional.  Naturally,
> there
> > was an attachment that you were incapable of retrieving.  Better luck to
> you
> > next time.
> >
> > John
>