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"Mechanical Music Digest 97.01.25" Is Too Long!
By Rob DeLand

The digest name comes as a 31-character field, and if I save the file
from my email program (Microsoft Mail) the file name is truncated to 30
characters.  This means I have to delete something or I lose the last
character of the date!  The date character is very important, so I
usually delete the space before the date.  Would you mind shortening the
name somehow?  Maybe take out that space, delete the dots from the date
code (my vote), or use an abbreviation?

I hope someone else has this problem too, 'cause I hate to be such a
nuisance if it's just for me.  What do you think?

Rob DeLand

 [ Editors note:
 [
 [ We had a few requests, long ago, to use an 8-character name for DOS
 [ compatibility.  Fortunately, everyone soon got email programs which
 [ handle longer names, and the problem went away.  I use Eudora on the
 [ Macintosh, which handles at least 61 characters in the index.  Let's
 [ see what others say, Rob.  I have contrasting views of the matter:
 [
 [  1.  Microsoft Mail is deficient, versus
 [  2.  You're right, the name could be shorter!
 [
 [ While we're discussing changes...  Does everyone have "Mime 1.0"
 [ capability?  This is a popular method for transmitting in e-mail the
 [ special characters used in the languages of western Europe, and it's
 [ a public standard (not proprietary) which anyone may use.  Someday
 [ I want the Digest to use Mime 1.0 so that the names and cities of
 [ our members abroad can be properly spelled, and also for discussions
 [ of composers and their works.
 [
 [ Robbie Rhodes



(Message sent 25 Jan 1997 14:11:16 U , from time zone -0800.)

Key Words in Subject:  97.01.25, Digest, Is, Long, Mechanical, Music, Too