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Re: e-mail formating

On Fri, 28 Mar 1997, James Mclean wrote:
Prof. John P. Ertel says:
What's wrong with BinHex (with or without initial compaction)?

Correct me if I'm wrong (because I'd certainly like to know if I am), but I
think that BinHex is just a way to convert binary files to ASCII so that
they can be sent through e-mail. You still need to choose what format the
binary original will be in. Not to mention that I think BinHex is mostly a
MacIntosh thing.

James,
As far as I can tell, binhex is not compression. It is simply a
leftover from the bitnet era when mailers could not handle binary files as
attachments. It does just as you say, converts binary files to ASCII.
Thsi is not necessary anymore unless you use an archaic mailer.
From personal experience, sending binary files as attachments to
e-mail has never been a problem. Compression schemes may vary from
platform to platform, so that may complicate things. Without compression,
once the attached file is extracted from the e-mail and DL to the mac or
PC it all seems to come out in the wash.
There is one exception to this and that is that some people save
files in the "newest" version format and assume that everyone has that.
It may or may not be retro-compatable. The release of windows 95 and
office 97 has really messed things up for PC users still using windows
3.11 not running 32 bit systems. I also have mac users with the same
problems between power macs and older models that can't run the larger
operating systems.

QUESTION: Do you really need 32 or 64 bits for a document?

NOTE: For those TeX users out there. When you send a tex file, you are
assuming that the machine on the recieving end has the same fonts
available to it. That is a problem we are working on solving now. This
does not occur with preformatted templates, but for special documents, it
can create problems. TeX is so versatile and powerful it sometimes shoots
itself in the foot.
--
James Bradford Shue jshue@comp.uark.edu
University of Arkansas Voice phone:(501) 575-6059
Physics Lab/Demo Curator FAX Number: (501) 575-4580
WWW Page http://comp.uark.edu/~jshue