If you do not wish to communicate with the target recipient, then it is
easiest to just not bother to send anything. It is pretty silly to send
stuff that will not be received. Packaging the report as two messages
is a much less difficult task than is the prepartiona of the report in
the forst place. I think it is a good idea to keep the relative efforts
in perspective. A very small effort by the publisher will save lots of
hard work by the many receipients who need the smaller message size.
It seems to me that folks have been receiving these messages with no
problem for quite a while now. It's only recently, a single site
that's not even directly connected to the Internet, for policy
reasons, finds it difficult to receive these messages. And everyone
else should suffer to accomodate these folks? Presumably, the best
way to do this is to send virtual card-image files, in UPPER CASE
CHARACTERS ONLY IN CASE THEY HAVE OLD ADM3 TERMINALS. If you want to
keep relative efforts in a real perspective, the easiest course of
action is to drop them from the mailing list! And just what is the
actual number of these "many receipients who need the smaller message
size" that will cause the course of regular, ordinary day-to-day
business on the Internet to change?
So, in my view, the burden of breaking the messages up into smaller
sized bundles is properly laid upon whoever wants the information to be
received. As I read this situation, this means that the publisher of
the INTERNET MONTHLY REPORT "owns the problem" of packaging it so it can
be received by the intended recipients.
It seems to me that the recpients of the IETF mailing list should be
somewhat representative of folks that have some proficiency in how to
do Internet style networking. This is the sort of reason we have
standards; so folks can communicate. If you don't conform, you lose.
Why should I have to suffer by receiving multiple mail messages when a
single one has worked Just Fine for many years now, is easier to
handle, index and search. For the sake of a single brain-damaged
implementation?
Louis A. Mamakos
University of Maryland, College Park