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