Date sent:        Fri, 6 Feb 1998 19:07:02 -0500
To:               eos@avocado.pc.helsinki.fi
From:             Howard Dinin 
Subject:          EOS: MIMEs not wanted on this list
Send reply to:    eos@avocado.pc.Helsinki.FI

Well, now that we've gotten our yaya's out on the subject of mutually
objectionable national traits, here's some advice to those who are
silently, and probably unknowingly, sending a raft-load of junk with their
email.

Perhaps unknown to many users of Microsoft Exchange--the default e-mail
program that accompanies any installation of Microsoft Wnidows95--is the
fact that when you send your mail, you also send a packet of additional
data in a file called Winmail.dat. It's a MIME file--MIME being a protocol
for allowing the inclusion of formatting information (such as boldface and
italics) in an e-mail message.

Many existing non-Exchange mail clients are either not equipped to handle
MIME or have this feature turned off (because frankly it's a pain in the
ass, a bandwidth hog, and very much not an original internet e-mail
standard--e-mail always having been mainly plain text).

In short, every Exchange message is accompanied by a file that craps up the
receiver's hard drive (for people who are regular subscribers) and makes
messages hard to read. It also makes the digest fat and bloated with all
too frequent installments (for us digest readers and list-followers),
stuffing the digest with in-fill of alphanumeric gibberish. This happens
automatically on the list because the server uses majordomo software,
rightly, that does not process MIME information except to interpolate it
into the text with the plain text message.

There's an easy way to stop this flow of junk and good citizens of any
nation who use Windows95 and Microsoft Exchange will no doubt increase
national pride and increase their esteem in the eyes of their fellows in
other nations by doing so. It's also environmentally sound--conserving all
those consonants and vowels and numbers, and saving gigawatts of energy
required in the course of a year to transmit and store this otherwise
useless byproduct of sharing valuable EOS information.

Here's how:

Method One:

- In either Microsoft Exchange or Windows Messaging, select OPTIONS from
the TOOLS menu.

- Choose the SERVICES tab, and select INTERNET MAIL from the list.If
Internet Mail is not listed, click ADD to add this service to the list.

- Click PROPERTIES, and then MESSAGE FORMAT.

- Turn off the USE MIME WHEN SENDING MESSAGES option.

- Click OK and then OK again.

Method Two:

- Double-click on the name of each recipient in your ADDRESS BOOK.

- Turn off the option that reads "Always send to this recipient in
Microsoft rich-text format."

- This option needs to be set for __each__ recipient of a message. If even
one has this turned on, __all__ recipients will still get the attachment.

Either of these methods should work for most users, but sometimes nothing
seems to work. If you plan on sending lots of Internet email, seriously
consider using a mail program more suited to the task, such as the freely
available (and free) Eudora Lite.

A bug in Microsoft Exchange may cause line breaks to be replaced with equal
signs when rich-text is disabled [you see a lot of this in the digest
also]. To fix this bug in Exchange, select OPTIONS from the TOOLS menu in
Exchange or Messaging. Choose the SERVICES tab, and select INTERNET MAIL
from the list. If Internet Mail is not listed, click ADD to add this
service to the list. Click PROPERTIES, and then MESSAGE FORMAT. Click
CHARACTER SET and change the selection from ISO-8859-2 to US ASCII. Click
OK and then OK again when finished.

I hope this inspires all of you sending unsolicited packets of MIME excreta
around the world to stop.

With many thanks to "Windows Annoyances," an excellent book written and
copyright (1997) by David A. Karp, published by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
here in the United States of Ugly America, and quoted without permission.

[Howard Dinin -- Bertha Communications Inc.
http://www.bertha.com -- worth at least 1000 words
617.497.6666     617.497.6699f
howard@bertha.com]

If you have any question, remark, comment, want to share some philosophy or just want to express your opinion about these pages, feel free to send email to: w.j.markerink @ a1.nl