On  7 Nov 98 at 16:32, Mike Vest wrote:

> Unfortunately, all the responses coming in from PCSOFT came to me
> as attachments with the name "winmail.dat" which I cannot read.

  Some of Microsoft's recent e-mail programs provide -- in their
default configurations -- "rich text" by attaching a version of the
message, with embedded font and colour information, in an attachment
named WINMAIL.DAT.
  As far as I am aware, only compatible Microsoft mail reading
programs know what to do with this.

  Here's where it begins to get weird.  If there were people
sending messages to the list this way, the listowners and/or
moderators would point out the relevant language in the list rules,
and try to assist them to reconfigure their sending software to turn
off rich text when sending to the list.
  Since I've seen no sign of that, I suspect that maybe some mail
server close to your "end" is adding this.  [I've seen various
reports of ways in which Microsoft's "Exchange Server" product
doesn't quite follow common standards, and it may offer a
configuration option with this effect.  That wouldn't likely just
affect mail from PCSOFT, though, but mail from almost anyone.]

>   Netscape 4.5 (using Win 95) apparently does not recognize this
> file type and indicates it cannot find the appropriate plug-in to
> read it.

  ".DAT" stands for "data".  So many programs use this extension for
so many different formats that no association based on file type is
useful.

David G

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