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Subject:Re: MIME encoding From:Iain Harrison <iharrison -at- SCT -dot- CO -dot- UK> Date:Wed, 11 Dec 1996 10:26:43 GMT
David Hailey sent a message with the following header text:
>>
This is a MIME message. If you are reading this text, you may want to
consider changing to a mail reader or gateway that understands how to
properly handle MIME multipart messages.
<<
David, I realise that you probably didn't write the header, and may not
have any choice of software. This is not intended as a flame at you, but
personally I am not happy with MIME email.
1. There is no advantage in sending ASCII text MIME encoded, so there is
no reason to have software that reads it - the converse is true in fact,
but that's not a topic for here.
2. The message was all there in ASCII, followed by loads of MIME-encoded
data, doubling the size of the message but adding no information. If
everyone sent MIME or other sorts of formatted text as email, the
internet would be even slower than it is already.
Can anyone please explain to me the advantage in an encoding scheme such
as MIME for text messages?
Iain Harrison
iharrison -at- sct -dot- co -dot- uk
