Re: Enabling embedded pictures in Messages
By: Tim Schattkowsky to All on Thu Feb 10 2022 02:42 pm

Hello All,

when using Fido today I regularly hit the wall when I notice that I would li 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 n 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 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/referen
pictures. This will be a lot to implement and particularly difficult to
handle in 16-Bit software due to memory restrictions and lack of framewor
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 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 instea of providing half a text processor for creating formatted text, people can j 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 klud 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, bu enabling the reader to automatically download such pictures and maybe includ automated upload/linking of the image in the editor. However, that would be quite dependent on other services.

*What do you think?*

Regards,
Tim

Tim, I like the last one. An OLR that would then include the picture from a posted link, if I follow you right.

xxcarol
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Hello Carol Shenkenberger!

** On Saturday 05.03.22 - 15:47, Carol Shenkenberger wrote to Tim Schattkowsky:

My idea for the latter would be to include the .jpg as Base64 and add a
klud 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,
bu enabling the reader to automatically download such pictures and maybe
includ automated upload/linking of the image in the editor. However, that
would be quite dependent on other services.

*What do you think?*

Regards,
Tim

Tim, I like the last one. An OLR that would then include the picture
from a posted link, if I follow you right.

As a person who has a limited amount of data per month with
mobile data, I would not appreciate an influx of .jpg data in
the mix. A hot link to serve the intended image at the bbs
node or an agreed upon central node would be better.

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