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Subject:MIME encoding From:Alexander Von_obert <avobert -at- TWH -dot- MSN -dot- SUB -dot- ORG> Date:Wed, 11 Dec 1996 16:12:01 +0100
Hello Iain,
* Antwort auf eine Nachricht von Iain Harrison an All am 11.12.96
IH> This is a MIME message. If you are reading this text, you may
IH> want to
IH> consider changing to a mail reader or gateway that understands
IH> how to
IH> properly handle MIME multipart messages.
IH> personally I am not happy with MIME email.
IH> 1. There is no advantage in sending ASCII text MIME encoded
There is a definite advantage of sending ASCII text MIME encoded as soon as you
need the high bit, as most languages besides English do.
IH> 2. The message was all there in ASCII, followed by loads of
IH> MIME-encoded
IH> data, doubling the size of the message but adding no
IH> information.
There was lots of information added, in deed. Get a freeware MIME decoder.
IH> Can anyone please explain to me the advantage in an encoding
IH> scheme such
IH> as MIME for text messages?
There was a WordPerfect file in that message. Therefore you could get
something better than plain, unformatted ASCII, if you wished.
...but basically you are right: Please try to avoid MIME messages or if you
really want to, use it for *compressed* files. ZIP or LHA should be available
for about every platform in use here. I made a ZIP file of the MIME encoded
documents and offer it to the users of my BBS.