[Tutor] Attaching program text to messages

[Ben Finney]

Alan Gauld via Tutor <tutor at python.org> writes:

> Now, how do we educate everyone on how to specify and use a text
> attachment? (This is a serious question BTW since we can add it
> to the tutor welcome/usage message.)

That depends on who's included in “everyone” :-)

If it includes people who don't wish to change their email client, I
think that may be impossible. Some email clients (e.g. Microsoft
Outlook) are notoriously bad at handling attachments, so if you're not
willing to tell such people “switch to a better client” then you may not
be able to include them.

As well as telling people to avoid some terrible email clients, you're
talking about educating people on how to use their email client's
specific features.

Does “everyone” include people who are just trying to post a message
here for the first time and aren't ready to gat a lecture on what an
email client even is? (The proportion of people using email without any
awareness of what program they're even using is surprisingly high, so a
document saying “Follow the instructions from the section that applies
to your specific email client” will not be of use to those people.)

It's a difficult problem: email should be simple to use correctly by
default, but people's email clients – that many of them didn't actively
select – are in varying states of brokenness, before they even get any
information from us about what to do.

-- 
 \        “Intellectual property is to the 21st century what the slave |
  `\                              trade was to the 16th.” —David Mertz |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney