RE: Pros and Cons of Mail Readers

["John Gastineau" <gastineau@mindspring.com>]

> A few months ago, someone posted some useful information about
> MIME  e-mail
> systems. I wonder if anyone kept the info (or if the original poster could
> repost). We are starting to have people on campus upgrade to a new e-mail
> software package that incorporates MIME and I'm experience the garbage
> effect with Eudora. Just wanted to get more info. on the ins and outs.

It may have been my message you're remembering. MIME-encoded messages have
strings like =20 embedded to indicated extended characters that require the
8th bit. The strings replace the 8bit characters with several 7bit
characters that can get through any primitive mailer. In addition to oddball
characters, long lines are wrapped with =20, which are to be unwrapped by
the receiving mailer.

Most email readers interpret MIME correctly. To accommodate those that do
not, in the sending mail software look for a setting to disable
MIME-encoding of email (not attachments--MIME's ok there). In Eudora, the
setting is called Quoted-Printable. Do not allow Eudora to use QP. Other
email systems have different names for the equivalent setting.

Automatic word wrap is not the problem; inserting your own hard returns
before the =20 is inserted appears to remove the problem, but it only keeps
it from becoming apparent. Do set your reader to wrap at something like 72
or 76 columns. The font setting in Eudora is not an issue, since the
non-MIME email is just ASCII.

Of course, none of this addresses html mail, which is a similar but separate
issue.

Using Eudora does not mean your mail won't be available in two places. See
the manual for ideas.

Using Eudora or some other POP mailer does not mean you can't correspond
with people on a mainframe.

Using Eudora or equivalent DOES mean that you'll never be annoyed by mangled
messages, unless someone else mangles the message and sends it to you. This
can happen when someone forwards a message from a primitive emailer or an
automatic digest processor removes the needed MIME header.

Using a powerful emailer lets you do things like sort the voluminous phys-l
mail into its own folder, apart from personal mail. Even spam can find its
way to its own folder (the trash).

The current version of free Eudora is 3.1xx and pay Eudora is 4.0. Older
versions lack the ability to deal with all attachments and all encoding
schemes.

Now for some physics.

JEG

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John E. Gastineau      gastineau@mindspring.com        	KC8IEW
900 B Ridgeway Ave.    http://gastineau.home.mindspring.com
Morgantown WV 26505    (304) 296-1966 voice    (304) 296-5035 fax
USA