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Re: Filtering out unwanted mime attachments

1997-10-13 02:49:01
| Sun 97-10-12 Michael Stone <mstone(_at_)itri(_dot_)loyola(_dot_)edu> 
list.procmail
| > | Sat 97-10-11 "Mike A. Harris" 
<mharris(_at_)blackwidow(_dot_)saultc(_dot_)on(_dot_)ca> list.procmail

[bandwidth limitation is diminishing problem: fiber cables, ATM ...]

| But the interchanges are close to overloaded in several key areas.
| (Witness the recent problems in mae-east, for example.) Gratuitously
| wasting bandwidth is really hard to justify.

I don't know who wastes band, but it is not the standard's like MIME fault,
which is good thing. An individual may waste band: one has a choice
of sending big file as mime x-gzip or as plain file 100K. Html files
are not essentially different from any other files. 

[html and MUA]

| But how much better is it to recieve 
| "<b>Yes</b>, I <i>want to</i> come to the party."
| instead of
| "Yes, I want to come to the party."
| 
| Especially when you send the same message twice, once in each format.
| There isn't much traffic going through mailing lists that actually
| _needs_ html markup tags.

I agree that seeing HTML in places where it is not desired, like in
mailing lists, is not appropriate. Still, a good MUA would have
displayed the text as instructed and you wouldn't be annoyed by the
html markup.

I know, I know, the MUA's are not up to MIME yet. I use Emacs and
that's basicly text based (in this regard XEmacs is much better), so
I do see the html. (it depends on my login, I also have automatic
html2text filter before I look at the message, so I actually don't see
any funny WORD6 or HTML or MS-NOTES markup..)

[PGP is desired, there is also X-pgp]

| Hmm. So it's good for everyone to use a different signature standard?

There is only one. The PGP. And X-pgp just dis/assembles PGP sig to/from
email headers, so that it's not one's way in the message.

| Especially the RSA format that netscape is using, that takes a 1 or 2 line
| message and turns it into a 1 or 2 _k_ message. 

Huh! that sounds bad indeed.

| Also, what's the advantage of x-pgp over rfc2015?

The existence of X-pgp is described in the doc I referred to. You'll
find reference for rfc2015 too.

jari