Dear TechNetters,

following the recent discussions about tools for reading attachments to
mails (subject was: "It works!"), I realized that I seemed to be in a
privileged situation: never had problems with reading attachments.

After thinking about it came up to my mind that it is fully automatic if
you use a WWW-browser like Netscape 2/3 or MS Internet Explorer 3 (using
a PC with MS operating system Windows 3.10 or higher). All those
browsers have a mail facility for reading and sending internet mails.
Once you established an internet connection, mailing is "on your finger
tips". Attachments in received mails are visible either as "links" which
you can click with your mouse and a helper application (which in fact
can be any application e.g. like MS Word) will start and show the
contents of the attachment or, even better, the browser belonging to the
mail facility is able to show you the content of the attachment right in
place in your mail.

Attaching files to your mails you wish to send is as easy: you get a
button which is named "attach file" or something like this. Click it and
you are asked of the file name of your attachment. Choose your file and
that's it! The mailing facility will do an encoding and incorparate your
attachment file into the mail in a kind which will allow sending the
attachment as if it would have been typed in plain text. Only headers
and footers are added which will allow the receiver of that mail to
differentiate between "normal" text and text which is an attachment. The
receivers mailing facility decodes this attachment and is restoring the
original file.

So, I suggest to use WWW-Browsers for attaching and retrieving files
from mails. 
Attaching to a mail just means attaching (or more correct incorporate)
files of any(!) kind to/in your mail. The file has to be encoded (or
transformed) because the old fashioned internet is not consistently able
to transport 8bit messages! The receiver has to decode (or to transform
back) the attachment. So the receiver of the mail gets the original file
sent.

Now a problem is arising for the receiver: how to read a, lets say,
excel sheet, if he does not have the excel program? Fortunately, many
file types require not too much effort to build an application which is
capable to at least show the file. Oftenly you can find these
applications accompanying your browser. Of course the receiver does not
run into problems if he has the program which was used to make the file
(by the sender).

So one important thing with attachments is: don't use file types which
are made by programs which are not wide spread or which are not
supported by the mailing facilities. At least in mailing lists like
TechNet. If you are mailing to only one person you can check out in
advance wether this person has the program needed to display the
attachment.

This are my comments.

Ulrich Korndoerfer

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