2000.10.19 15:10 "Attachments sent to list", by Howard Kaikow

2000.10.19 17:02 "Re: Attachments sent to list", by Andy

Hi Howard, libtiff,

Heh, it was almost in jest. I agree with you that the cards or signatures (often invalidated by list remailer) and redundant rich media reformats of the relevant information are chaff, and more or less simply deleted.

Most posts to most mailing lists, generally, are free of these details, with posters posting only ASCII with URLs.

I have seen perhaps three to ten times where viruses have been sent through mailing lists, they're pretty obvious to the relatively more sophisticated mailing list users, and often innocuous to varying software vendor implementations.

So I agree that mailing list posts should be regular text only messages.

Attachments of documents or examples or files sometimes happen, often it's convenient when most of the list's users are expecting or will review the document, or otherwise expect it.

Some mailreaders give those that receive rich media e-mail many lines of base64 and/or MIME chaff, they can delete as easily as anyone else, or moreso.

I think attached text only files are generally OK, but that is my interpretation.

So, that is one reader's opinion.

Basically, there is no enforcement besides banning upon list administrator pique (never happens) or total public castigation (never happens), because noone ever sends malicious e-mails to the mailing lists. Some might argue that, there are plenty of arguments.

Some list server software has ways to manage output to the list.

As an obligatory libtiff comment, making a generalized OJPEG reader to handle the five+ common OJPEG implementations would be quite a hassle. It might be better to have a more specialized ojtiftojtif program, and maybe then even jtiftoojtif.

Andy

contact Andy
company Apex Internet Software
email info@apexinternetsoftware.com
website http://www.apexinternetsoftware.com/