when using Fido today I regularly hit the wall when I notice that I would like to *attach at least a picture* to illustrate something. Also, people keep sendig me fido messages that refer to pictures put on their web space. This feels odd.
Also, the current practice for *text styles is limited* in application and not well-defined. Still, this seems to be the minor of the two issues.
I think this is really something that could/should be addressed in some way to enable relevant contemporary communication through fido.
To adress this, I see _at least_ two options:
1) Do it fully email-style by using MIME with HTML text and embedded/referenced pictures. This will be a lot to implement and particularly difficult to handle in 16-Bit software due to memory restrictions and lack of frameworks. Also, memory comes to mind when considering the size of the resulting messages. Using @SPLIT, these could be extended beyound 63k, but the resulting messages might be considered an annoyance. 2) Define a simple fidonet-compatible way that is more in line with existing fido technology (particularly a maximum message length of 63k) but still enables including at least a picture and maybe simple text styles while maintaining readability on non-compatible systems.
I find both alternatives interesting, but currently I prefer the latter with a focus on embedding the picture. The idea would by to have something that is more like the ability to post a picture on social media platforms. So instead of providing half a text processor for creating formatted text, people can just include the picture with their fidonet mail and ideally the editor will recompress the picture as needed to a jpg to limit the resuling message size including the encoding picture to 63k.
My idea for the latter would be to include the .jpg as Base64 and add a kludge to it for inline-display. This could also be done for multiple images.
An alternative would be including a link to the picture like we do today, but enabling the reader to automatically download such pictures and maybe include automated upload/linking of the image in the editor. However, that would be quite dependent on other services.
*What do you think?*
Regards, Tim --- WinPoint 398.3 * Origin: Original WinPoint Origin! (2:240/1120.29)
