Re: OE attachments grow in file size

From: Steve (nr4p_at_NOJUNKearthlink.net)
Date: 11/20/04 

Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 16:28:10 GMT

I appreciate that you spent alot of time on your response. Rest assured the
files are going to someone else typically a family member who has requested
it and has high speed.

But I have tried the same thing on my corporate email (Outlook with MS
Exchange server) and the files do not grow with this magnitude. 

-- 
Steve
"Vanguard" <no_email> wrote in message 
news:OZlLrExzEHA.2656@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> "Steve" <nr4p@NOJUNKearthlink.net> wrote in message 
> news:6aInd.6685$pK6.4809@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
>> Whenever I try to take a large file such as a jpegs, zip, or mpeg of 
>> about 7-8mb, OE6 reports it as a 12mb file (looking at it in the 
>> attachment line). Then my mail service won't take it since its over 10mb. 
>> But it definitely is smaller in the Pre-attached state on my HD.
>>
>> OE6 (XP Home sp2), seems to grow attachments by about 40-50%.
>> This does not happen with Outlook on my busness account.
>>
>> Searched MS and googled and haven't seen this. Any ideas why OE6 does 
>> this? How to stop it?
>> thanks
>>
>>
>
>
> Whether it is Outlook Express, Outlook, Thunderbird, Pegasus, or whatever 
> e-mail client of choice, attachments will ALWAYS be larger when attached 
> to an e-mail then their size in the file system.  Where do you think the 
> file gets "attached"?  There is no separate file floating around and 
> following your e-mail.  The file is WITHIN the body of your e-mail message 
> as a specially encoded plain-text section.  That means your file gets 
> converted from its binary version to a plain-text version (which takes 
> more bytes).
>
> If you look at the raw message format of your sent message (i.e., copy 
> yourself to you get a copy, but which requires you look at it with OE 
> since Outlook bastardizes the content of received e-mails into Microsoft's 
> proprietary format which is NOT the actual content that got received), 
> you'll see the section showing the encoded version of the file you 
> "attached".  Now use a hex editor to go look at the content of the file on 
> your hard drive (that you attached).  Notice that the contents are NOT the 
> same: one is binary and the other (in the e-mail) is the converted 
> plain-text version of that binary file.  If you attached a text file, the 
> encoded MIME part will look very similar but include additional formatting 
> info.  If you attach a binary file, like a JPEG, the encoded MIME part 
> containing the definition of the "attached" file will look very different 
> than what you would see in a hex editor. Expect about a 33% average 
> increase in the size of the attached file in your e-mail due to the 
> conversion.  For example, in a test case, sending myself a 2-line message 
> with a 23.8KB JPEG file "attached" to it resulted in a received e-mail 
> message that was 38KB in size (a 60% increase in size).  The text encoding 
> includes compression but the less compressible is a then the larger it 
> will be in its converted form within the e-mail, and if it is already a 
> compressed file then it might actually inflate more (JPEGs are compressed 
> files).  As another example, a 4.29KB .txt file will enlarge a test e-mail 
> to 10KB, whereas a 2.18KB .zip file with that contains that same .txt file 
> will result in an e-mail message that is 8KB in size.  So you reduced the 
> file to 50% of its size by compressing it but you only gained a 20% for 
> the size of the e-mail (i.e., encoding to plain text with compression an 
> already compressed file will actually inflate the size of your e-mail 
> message).
>
> If you are using UUencode to encode your attached file (an old method) 
> then go Google on UUencode/UUdecode to see how encoding works for 
> attaching files using that scheme.  It is likely, however, that you are 
> using MIME to separate the parts of your message.  One MIME part will 
> contain your message and another MIME part will contain the text-encoded 
> version of your attached file.  You can search http://www.rfc-editor.org/ 
> to find the RFCs that describe MIME and read how it encodes attachments.
>
> The enlargement of the attached file along with throttling of mail servers 
> to provide response to all connected users (so one user doesn't usurp all 
> bandwidth with a huge message download) along with old servers not 
> handling some content correctly makes e-mail a stupid choice for 
> transferring files.  E-mail is not designed nor should be used as a 
> replacement for FTP (file transfer protocol).  If you have a huge file to 
> send someone, do you really want to be rude by consuming up a lot of their 
> disk quota for their e-mail account and make them waste time to download 
> your huge message which they may not want or they only want your message 
> without your picture which might be superfluous to your message?  Remember 
> that there is still a huge number of user using dial-up.  Save your file 
> on a server somewhere, like on your personal web pages or other online 
> storage, and include a link to it in your message.  Then the recipient can 
> quickly download your small message and THEY can decide if they want to 
> also download your file.
>
> -- 
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