Attachments to e-mail messages

If you send an attachment (eg. a picture) to a mailing list like Imps@OneList, you send it to dozens of people who did not ask for it. It is unfair to others who may have a slow modem and may be paying for their on-line service by the minute.

Recently there have been several reports of a virus being passed through discussion lists in attachments. Only the Happy 99 work has bothered this list so far... Be reminded that, in general, people should not open email attachments or run programs from people they do not know. That is how this and other viruses are spread. There can be macro-virsuses hidden in a word-processor- or spreadsheet file and it's possible to put a trojan horse in a jpeg.
It is a possibility to use software like MimeSweeper to check email messages for the presence of computer viruses.

If you want/ need to provide a document to the majority of the users of Imps@onelist.com, put it on a web site (your home page ?) or anonymous FTP archive. Then send a message to Imps@onelist with just the URL and an explanation of what can be found there.
You might consider contacting me to put it on The Imp Site for you. Or you can use the 'member centre' of imps@onelist.com to put it there. (A total of 5Mb available).

Although the rule is to send no attachments at all to mailing lists, there may be circumstances that it should be done. But only if it is of reasonable size (less than 50K) and of use or pleasing to most users.
If you need to send an attachment, have the courtesy to use a format that everybody on the list can cope with. This means independent of operating systems or software.

Software settings
Many e-mail programs allow you to set a maximum size for messages that you are willing to receive. You should be able to set up something like:
Delete from Server any file from 'imps@onelist.com' greater than XX kB

But don't send overly large graphics, and next tell any complainers that they should have set their software to delete large messages.
The users of this list should not have to use this setting to avoid receiving ill-considered attachments, and consequently miss out on useful ones.

Many current email clients are set up to send mail in other than plain text format by default, RTF, HTML, attached files, etc. These settings render email unreadable by some members and are a larger strain on bandwidth, please do not use this feature when sending mail to the lists. The e-mail FAQ provides a solution to this problem for some e-mail clients.
Another site: Everything E-mail

Safety
You open attachments that are sent to this mailing list at your own risk. You know that opening executables may activate a virus. But viruses can hide in (the macros of) documents, too (eg. Word or Excel).

• Signatures
• Text attachment
• Pictures / Photos

Signatures
Your signature is a special type of attachment, one that is always included within the message.

How much information you want to include with your sig is up to you. While on some lists people prefer to remain anonymous, on the Imps list it is accepted practice to sign postings. You might give your city (or region) and country (or US state). If you have a web site, state the URL.

However, if you post to imps@onelist often, avoid lengthy tags as they become annoying to other users when seen over and over. Often-seen sigs ought to be less than six lines. (And preferably be one-liners.)

Internet is a cross-platform utility. Don't think everybody will be using Windows 95/98 and the latest MS software. There are those on the list who use Unix or MacOS.

Text attachments
If the attachment is just text, then there is no real need to send it separately as an attachment. It would be better send it within the e-mail. Don't attach word-processor files, but convert them to plain text, save them as .txt files and either attach those or send them within your message.

If you have a text made up in a special font with pictures, tables and logos (and these extras are essential for the understanding of the text), consider sending it along as an HTML file (attached, not included!).

If you need to send graphics, it is best to use GIF for line art and JPEG for photos (although occasionally a drawing can be less bytes if JPEG is used...).

JPEG

JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group and defines a format for storing pictures in a compressed format. The JPEG format is known as a 'lossy' compression format because parts of the image data are thrown out during compression to save space. In contrast, lossless compression formats do not discard any information and rely on traditional compression tricks to reduce the size of a file.

Depending on the quality chosen, the lossy compression can significantly reduce the size of an image without noticeable changes to the picture the end user sees. The information discarded is generally data that the human eye doesn't need for efficient viewing.

All major web browsers and most currently available graphics programs can read JPEG files.

GIF

GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format and is a widely used image format on the Internet. GIF files can even contain multiple images to create simple animated sequences. Unlike JPEG, GIF images are limited to 256 colors and are best used for non-photographic images like cartoons. Like JPEG images, GIF images can be viewed by all major web browsers and most graphics programs.

Exchange between PC and Mac Conversion tools: Conversion Plus (for windows); MacLink Plus (for Mac). see DataViz

TIFF

ONElist limits messages to 500kb in size, which is larger than any attachment you hopefully intend to send.