On Wed, 26 Jun 1996 15:38:26 -0500, Ingrid H. Shafer wrote:
>     The email guru at GVSU says it's an external problem.
 
Right.  Don't you just love it when a "guru" isn't?  The first time I heard
an expert INSIST it was some other vendor's problem (when it turned out to
be his) was in 1968 (if I'd been older I probably would have heard that in
1948 :-)
 
First question: what mail software is being used?  Has the user some
alternate mail client handy?  Does his system support downloading mail to
an ASCII file that can be read with any word processor (mail headers and
all).
 
The response to "it's an external problem" is DUBIOUS as LISTSERV mail is
being read (by must be millions by now) all over the world--if the problem
IS external it's still in the user's domain.
 
I think it reasonable take the position (as I have with hosts that can't
seem to get their daemon configured properly) that if their system doesn't
conform to 1989 Internet mail standards, then I'm sorry they'll just have
to do without lists.  And while I think it's a tad ridiculous, my mail
system will deal with a single message length of several megabytes if it
must (so far the largest piece of mail I've browsed is about 400K but I
don't want to deal with anything nearly that large from home over a modem).
In today's world, 100K digest messages aren't all that uncommon and hosts
need to be able to deal with them (info-mac for example is available ONLY
in digest form and commonly runs around 100K).
 
/s Murphy A. Sewall <[log in to unmask]>      (860) 486-2489 voice
   Professor of Marketing                          (860) 456-7725 fax
   http://mktg.sba.uconn.edu/MKT/Faculty/Sewall.html