Satoshi's response suggests that I revise my prior post. It was my mistaken
impression that attachments or Web created what I thought to be "minor
problems" for some of our colleagues. It's obvious that I was wrong. For
some colleagues, the problems these formats create are nearly
insurmountable.
Even to avoid minor problems, and to keep a thread focused in one place,
one medium and one channel, I had been advocating using ASCII in direct
email. My preference is to write in a word processor for clarity and then
to paste the ASCII characters into an email document, but everyone has
their own way to work. I have advocated these format issues as a courtesy.
The information in Satoshi's post suggests these considerations are a
necessity if all subscribers are to take part.
At the same time, I gather from Chris Rust and others that their email
systems cut the tails off long posts, such as long issues of the
informative DRS News or lengthy posts here. Here arises a question. Is it
possible that the systems administrators of systems using such email
programs or systems can do something? It may simply involve tweaking the
parameters, or setting an automatic function that breaks posts identified
by the system as overly long into two packets? In its earlier incarnation,
we had a system that seems to have done something like that when a post
became too long.
It's one thing to decide how and where to post when we want to, and to
decide the length based on the needs of our colloquium and the wishes of
our members. It's another to be constrained by the technology. Can we solve
this so it works for everyone?
Ken Friedman
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