>After the helpful advice on encoding could I solicit the assembly's >counsel on compression? I mainly send AppleWorks files to Mac users and >these seem to compress and decompress OK most of the time. Sending files, >even .JPGs to PC users is another matter. Any guidance appreciated.
When sending to Mac users, you are probably pretty safe to compress the items. When sending to PC users, you may have a problem. Emailer's built in compression method is Stuffit. Although Aladdin has a version of Stuffit for Windows, not many PC users have it. So most of the time, they won't be able to unstuff the file. If you must use compression for files sent to a PC user, zip the files instead. Stuffit can make a zip file if you ask it to, but you have to manually do it and then attach the resulting zip file to the email. You can't just use the "Compress" option in Emailer. Also, depending on what you are sending, compression may be a waste of time (and might make the file larger). Some files are already compressed. JPEGs are an example. The JPEG format is already a compressed data format, so stuffing or zipping a JPEG will have little effect and may actually make the file larger. AppleWorks files on the other hand will probably get a pretty good savings in size if you stuff or zip them. There is lots of "fluff" space in most document files of that nature (AppleWorks, MS Word docs, Excel...). Also, don't discount the decompressing effort vs the high speed connection factor. If you are sending to people on a high speed internet connection like DSL or Cable, the effort to decompress the file on the other side may outweigh the savings in download time for the smaller file. Remember, most Cable internet connections can pull down at least 1 Megabits per second. That translates to about 128 K per second, or about 8 seconds to download one megabyte file. So compressing a 150 K AppleWorks document down to a 15 K stuffit file, well, you just saved the person about half a second in download time, but cost them a minute in file shuffling to decompress it on the other side. On the other hand, there may be great savings to compression. If your file is 35 MB of plain text and it compresses down to 8 MB when stuffed. That obviously makes it worth compressing the file (5 minutes of download vs 1 minute). -chris <http://www.mythtech.net> ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
