Attachments and HTML (was Re: XP & malware)

[Carl Distefano cld@xxxxxxxx]

Reply to note from J R FOX  Thu, 24 May 2012
12:55:02 -0700 (PDT)

> After the fact, it occurred to me that members attach (modest
> sized) screen shots to posts on this list with some regularity.
> For some reason, I seemed to recall that this may have been
> discouraged, ...

Attachments are permitted on the XyWrite list; there is a 5MB limit on
message size (the smaller, the better, needless to say). Note that
attached files are not preserved in the Freelists.org Web-based
archive (links to the attachments appear below the archived message,
but they go dead), but attached files are preserved, and images are
visible, on the XySearch archive (a very nice feature). Compare these
two versions of the same archived message from 10 November 2011:

http://www.freelists.org/post/xywrite/running-Xy-on-a-Mac,18
(dead "PNG image" links)

http://tinyurl.com/xysearch/2011/msg00544.htm
(attached images displayed)

> ... just as we are not supposed to post here using
> HTML formatting, with fonts, sizes of print and the like.

I've given up reminding people about this -- and there are chronic
violators -- but, yes, plain text is still the gold standard. I, for
one, read my list messages in XyWrite, and HTML requires an extra
step, whether stripping out the tags, or viewing the message in a
browser, or just slogging through the message, tags and all. It's a
pain. (We've enabled a list option to "humanize" HTML attachments,
i.e., convert them to plain text, but it has no effect on inline
HTML.)

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx