Dear Jody,

This is beside the AMD but can you give me an easy way to send photos?  I
have a Logitech scanner that will save in JPEG or GIF among others, and I
think that these formats will send, but don't know how.  If it's lengthy,
just tell me to get a book.  But you seem to be very knowledgeable, and may
save me some time.

 [ There are a bunch of ways to transfer these files.  Depending on the
 [ "compression factor" you set on JPEG, JPEG files can be dramatically
 [ smaller than GIF files.  JPEG is a "lossy" compression method, while
 [ GIF produces an "identical" copy.  I almost always use JPEG when sending
 [ files, because it takes so long to upload (send) GIF files.  Its a
 [ good idea to re-extract the files before sending them to make sure that
 [ what you are sending will look good at the other end.  Although "lossy",
 [ modest compression settings (70%) often look indistinguishable from the
 [ original.
 [
 [ I know that you now have a "real" Internet account, so one option is to
 [ use "FTP" (File Transfer Protocol).  This is how I make the archived
 [ digests available for anyone to retrieve from Foxtail, but its clumsy
 [ because you need to put the files in a publicly accessible area or
 [ exchange passwords with your friends.  FTP transfer _ARE_ the normal
 [ way of uploading pictures that will be put into a Web page.
 [
 [ To send pictures as "attachments" to e-mail, you need to encode the
 [ image file into "printable ASCII".  That is because mail cannot transmit
 [ all 256 character combinations that can be made from 8 bits of data.
 [ Many of the modern mail programs are capable of encoding binary files
 [ automatically when you do an "attach" command from the menu.  There
 [ are 3 common encoding forms used (BinHex, Base64, and UUENCODE) which
 [ you select from an options menu.  Unfortunately you may have to consult,
 [ in advance, with the recipient as to which format is usable by their
 [ mail program.  Once decoded, they _ALSO_ have to be able to deal with
 [ the decoded file.  For instance, you may be able to generate .GIF, .PCX
 [ and .JPG files, but the recipient may only be able to read .GIF and .TFF
 [ files.  In this case you would be stuck sending a .GIF, even though it is
 [ probably larger.
 [
 [ I hope this helps.  Several other of our readers are regularly using
 [ mail programs which can do attachments (Eudora is probably the most
 [ common).  I hope some of them will also put their 2 cents worth in.
 [ Because I run Unix and am attached to a fairly ancient mail program,
 [ I actually encode and decode my attachments by hand.  This is not something
 [ you want to do if you can avoid it!
 [
 [ Good luck.  Let me know if this helps.
 [
 [ Jody



Once again, thank's for all your work, and include me in as a contributor
if you want to get new software.  However, even though I realize that you
are taking on a tremendous amount of work, I certainly appreciate your
editorializing the Digest.  Sometimes your comments help it to make sense.

Thanks again!

Beatrice Robertson

 [ Thanks for the positive feedback.  As the group gets busier, the editing
 [ is taking an unexpected amount of work.  On the other hand, I really think
 [ that the clarifying comments are necessary to keep things flowing smoothly.
 [ Jody