tlug: Re: 'large' attachments

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Darren" == Darren Cook <darren@example.com> writes:

    >> Not to start a flame war, but what is you definition of big? I
    >> would have thought that 27k was reasonable. Granted, that 27k
    >> to all the ...  Just curious as what you and others feel is the
    >> correct etiquette?

    Darren> On a mailing list no attachments is a good rule of
    Darren> thumb. I'd only make an exception if it was small and
    Darren> important for the current discussion. Putting it up on a
    Darren> web or ftp server is better.

Unless the list is xemacs-beta and the sender is Ben Wing, who has
serious RSI and all of whose emails start with "If this email contains
a RealAudio attachment..."  Typical email from Ben runs 150kB.  And on
that list, if I had to limit bandwidth, I'd filter everybody else....
(Ben wrote the multilingual support for XEmacs, and made it API-
compatible with Mule as developed at ETL.  Among many critical
contributions.  When Ben speaks, people listen.  Literally, even by
email :-)

Just to make the point that the only hard-and-fast rule is there are no 
hard-and-fast rules.

    Darren> For normal email it's good etiquette to ask before sending
    Darren> a large attachment. I'd define large as above 15-20K but
    Darren> then people are very sensitive about bandwidth in Japan.

Shit!  You mean I have to limit my attachments to 15-20% of my text?

    Darren> As a system administrator the real fun starts when people
    Darren> send a 2Mb Word file to everyone else in their
    Darren> department/company. Mail server disk space vanishes in an
    Darren> instant!

I thought that was when the boss who refused to allow the sysadmin to
limit the size of attachments (or worse, forced her to install a mail
system that didn't allow such limits) found that his home directory
had been overwritten by the mail spool and had to be restored from a
tape stored in Kalamazoo?

Anyway, friends don't let friends use Microsoft products.  What _is_
this with 2MB Word files?  At that size, the Shannon content has got
to be about 1000 bits/character, max.  About the density of outer space.

Tokoro de, why the hell hasn't somebody written a filter for corporate
mailing systems that strips out attachments, puts them in a special
spool and converts the _internal_ body attachments to MIME _external_
body attachments when the addressee is internal?  Or written a user
agent that doesn't attach things, but stuffs them into a public area
and inserts an URL into the text?  Hmmm ... think I'll implement that
for Emacs.  Then only Pine users need be shitsurei....  :-)

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