[sf-lug] Kwrite to Windows

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Alex Kleider (a_kleider at yahoo.com):
> --- Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> > Me, I'd just inline the text.  Simpler.
> 
> This surprises me. I would have predicted that _you'd_ use tofrodos or
> some equivalent from the command line:-)

Inline text (in e-mail) gets its endline control characters set at the
receiving end to something appropriate for the receiving operating
system, automatically, by the mail-handling software.  The only time you
encounter the foolishness of either one huge indecipherable line or
lines cluttered with spurious "^M" marks at the end is when somebody has
insisted on attaching a text "document".  So, as the old technical
support joke goes, "Don't Do That, Then."

I cannot count the number of times I've received e-mail from some
MS-Windows user that has some bizarre binary attachment... that turns
out to be BASE64-encoded binary... that in turn encloses a huge MS-Word 
file... that in turn is the world's most overengineered container for
_four lines of plain ASCII text_.  So, as recipient, I get to do ten
minutes' work disassembling an obscure foreign-OS construct just to 
get to a few lines of text.

It's difficult, I've found, to convince those culprits from continuing
to do that:  It's "simple", they claim.  They just push the "attach"
button, and everything else is automagic... resulting, unbeknownst to
them, in a baroque mess.  Sometimes I lose patience and just send the
thing back saying "Learn how to use your goddamned clipboard."  ;->