Re: e-mail formating

[John Mallinckrodt <ajmallinckro@CSUPomona.Edu>]

On Thu, 27 Mar 1997, Brad Shue wrote:

> 	I don't think it has anything to do with pro/anti mac.  The PC
> simply doesn't do those types of compression.  And from my experience
> trying to deal with .sit and .hqx files on macs, they are Satan's methods.
> 	You must use something that is cross platform.  Do macs handle
> .zip files?  That is the most common type of compression for PCs.

Not true.  PC's can do binhex (.hqx) and Macs can do .zip (no pun
intended).  They just *don't* usually.  Most PC people simply don't have a
binhex application and most Mac people don't have one for .zip.  They do
exist.  Furthermore, unlike .zip and .sit, binhex is not a compression
format; it is a binary to ASCII format.  UUE is a much more common cross
platform binary to ASCII format and there are excellent uue converters
available for both Macs and PC's.

The ultimate issue, however, is being able to transmit tables, graphs, and
other non-ascii info across platforms.  Compression and ascii to binary
formats don't do much for you here because, ultimately, you have to have
something your PC's *and* Macs can interpret graphically.  This is where
rtf, latex, .pdf, postscript, etc. come in.  In these cases the point is
to describe the graphical material in a platform and application
independent way.

John
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