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Coded responses that irritate

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This paragraph is dumped in my mailbox regularly as a warning about an attached file: 'The following is an attached file item from cc:Mail. It contains information that had to be encoded to ensure successful transmission through various mail systems. To decode the file use the UUDECODE program.' It explains that somebody has sent me a file but they expect that I run an electronic mail client program that makes it easy to decode and I have the time or patience to decode it. Usually I just send it back and say I do not have the patience. Please send as a pure text file and preferably not as an attachment.

I am not terse. I just politely ask that in future they send the message in a format to which I am accustomed.

I always send files in pure ASCII text. Never have I had a reply saying: 'This message was too straightforward and perfectly legible. Can you please save it in an obscure format so I can have fun using my utilities programs to decode and convert and/or convert to a readable format?' It would probably take only a few keystrokes and clicks to decode or save as a new file. But when I get five a day and often the documents are not worth decoding, then it is a waste of time.

Sometimes I use PINE to retrieve and send e-mail. It's quick, harmless and with words - which is all I need to see when I send mail - they don't need to be in fancy colours or fonts.

Most of the time I use Netscape's inbuilt mail function because I haven't got the time to configure anything else.

Often I receive attached Word documents - even Corel's marketing people in Ottawa send documents occasionally in Word format, even though the firm bought WordPerfect last year.

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