PBEM Problems

[Joe Shaw]

Now that we've had more extensive experience using PBEM, I thought I'd ask the group about problems I'm encountering with emailed turns. It's not something that can't be worked around but I'd like to reduce the problems if possible.

I'm using a PC with Netscape as my email client since Outlooks scares me lately

1. With some opponents, my emails to or from them have the turn embedded within the body of the email. Sometimes we are able to salvage it by saving the entire email as the turn. Sometimes even that doesn't work. Sometimes they can cut and paste the relevant portion, sometimes not.

2. With some opponents, the email they send to me shows up without an attachment, but they tell me their "sent" copy shows the attachment.

I'm thinking it could be one of a couple of things, or maybe even both. It may be a problem with Netscape vs. Outlook or the way my Netscape is configured. The second issue might have to do with my ISP. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Also have others seen the same things?

Joe

[chrisl]

I've had experience with problem one, and possible experience with problem two.

1) I did some experiements, since my opponent (using netscape) couldn't see the files getting embedded. As far as I can tell, Netscape does this and you have to live with it.

The solution at the receiving end is to use a text editor (like BBEdit), not a word processor, to paste the files together. A text editor will show all characters, and not

insert any that you don't type. A word processor does all sorts of secret things, especially it it was written in Redmond.

I'm on my third game with this opponent, and never had a file not load, even after pasting together 2 MB files that were broken into 7 or 8 parts. You have to strip out the excess headers (from each email if it's split), and make sure you don't put in extra line feeds (or not enough).

2) Can't help with this one. Actually (editing the original post, I can) Use Eudora. It's available for both Mac and PC, and isn't susceptible to as many nefarious code snippets. It will also cure problem 1.

[This message has been edited by chrisl (edited 08-24-2000).]

[Capt. Toleran]

Outlook and Outlook Express also work well (and Outlook Express is free!). The attachments show up fine using these clients.

[Kingfish]

I've seen it, and can never nail down the reasons why.

I've had entire games come in that way, other games it bounces back and forth (inside the e-mail, then as an attachment, then back)

The only solution I can think of is to zip the file.

[Jarmo]

I've had problems with (1.)

Eudora and emailer suffer of it also.

What helps is compressing the files.

Between Macs, stuffit is the way to go. With PC's it's Zip.

Zipping and unzipping on mac is easy with MacZip, it's drag

and drop. And it's free.

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Now, would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of

our trenches and walking slowly towards the enemy sir?

[Hiram Sedai]

Yet another method I discovered:

I rename the text file by stripping the .txt off of it. Windows no longer recognizes it as a text file and the email client is forced to attach the file and not imbed it. The email recipient can just rename the file and put the .txt back onto it. This method has worked for me so far.

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-Work Hard

-Type Fast

-Save Often

[David Aitken]

I don't know if the PC version of Netscape has a View menu, but somewhere you should have an option called View Attachments Inline. Try toggling this and see if it makes a difference.

David

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There's a splinter in your eye, and it reads REACT

[Degrees of Frost]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jarmo:

I've had problems with (1.)

Eudora and emailer suffer of it also.

What helps is compressing the files.

Between Macs, stuffit is the way to go. With PC's it's Zip.

Zipping and unzipping on mac is easy with MacZip, it's drag

and drop. And it's free.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

had the same problem (1)- using Eudora Pro 4.2 - got my opponent zipping them up and sending them to me - works fine.

[Guest Captitalistdoginchina]

Hi there Joe,

I am using both Netscape and IE on my work and home machine. Both are quite reliable but i did encounter a few minor problems. These were easily overcome when i got into the habit of zipping all files and my opponent does the same. We do not have anymore problems. Using winzip is easy and its a free download from Cnet.

If you do still use text files you should get a small box at the bottom of the message with the text file name in Netscape - right click on it and select "save link as". The rest is simple. If the text comes inline with the message right click anywhere on the text message and click "save message" You will see a box with "Untitled" as the file name, from here you rename it as you like.

All in all though i highly recommend sending zipped files only as it also saves you time especially if you use winzip 8.0 where there is a command for "Zip and send by e-mail" which gives you a one click zip and attach to e-mail instruction. Works great for me and my opponents.

Hope this helps.

CDIC

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"Death solves all problems - no man no problem"

J.V.Stalin, 1918

[Joe Shaw]

Hi guys, thanks for the replies, at least I know it isn't just me. As for zipping, I have been doing that on occassion. It's just one extra step that I'd like to avoid if possible and since the text files seem to work "most" of the time I was hoping someone had a foolproof solution. But as they say "It's impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious."

I will check out WinZip 8.0, CDIC, sounds like it may simplify the issue a bit.

In any case, I've yet to have a game blow up completely as would happen on occassion in the Beta demo so that's good.

Joe

[Pfc Driscole James E]

This problem is caused by either the mailer or the isp being configured to add plain text attachments into the message body.

The was I corrected it was to used a binary editor to load the game exe file and change one of the - charaters in the "Play-By-Email Data Follows This Line" string to a hex ff (255). You would need to do this each time there is an upgrade but it's not hard to do.

The changed character forces the attchment to be encoded as quoteable-printable instead of bsing plain-text.

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Hiya Fellas!

[Mannheim Tanker]

I use Eudora, and attach the PBEM file as a .txt, zipped and unzipped, depending on the file size (and receive it this way too). I haven't had a single problem yet.

[This message has been edited by Mannheim Tanker (edited 08-24-2000).]

[Henri]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Joe Shaw:

Hi guys, thanks for the replies, at least I know it isn't just me. As for zipping, I have been doing that on occassion. It's just one extra step that I'd like to avoid if possible

Joe<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

In fact, zipping and unzipping files is actually faster than using text files if you put aliases for Winzip, the attached files folder and the pbem folder from CM on the desktop.

When you receive a mail with the zipped file (I use Eudora), just drag the attached zipped file icon from the Eudora window to the Winzip icon on the desktop, and a window will pop up with the correct address for the unzipped file already written (if you haven't changed it since the last time).Click enter. You are now ready to play your move in CM.

After you have saved your move in CM, go to the destop and drag the saved file from the pbem folder to the Winzip Icon, and type in the name for the zipped file; then from Eudora, select last received message and click reply and on the attach button and find the zipped file in the pbem folder and click on it. Send the file. That's all.It all takes less than a minute, and if you keep the same name for each game and just number the files consecutively, it is ridiculously easy and hassle free.

BTW, having attached files in the main text is an option that can be turned off.

Henri

[Fuerte]

I have automated the sending of PBEM turns. I have a batch file, which compresses the text file with PKZIP25, and then sends it with BLAT. Both are free programs. Here is my batch file (three lines):

@echo off

pkzip25 -add -max d:\dn\pbem.zip c:\games\cmbo\pbem\pbem.txt

blat - -to enemy@sci.fi -s "Combat Mission PBEM" -body "Extract to directory PBEM" -attach d:\dn\pbem.zip

When I receive a turn, it is also zipped, and I just open it in Winzip, which remembers the correct directory, and extracts it there.

[Ben Galanti]

This is a repost of something I just wrote in the tech forum:

I've looked into the problem of the embedded turns. It is a issue with how Netscape (both Mac and PC) handles text attachments, and there is no way to change it (other then to edit the MIME headers before the mail is sent). Warning, slightly technical explination ahead. When Netscape sees a text attachment, it sets the MIME header 'disposition-type' to 'inline' instead of 'attachment'. This tells the recieving e-mail client to show the text in the body of the message instead of treating it as a seperate attachment. Here's the standard: RFC 1806. Now, in the MIME standards, there is nothing that says the e-mail client can't _both_ show the text inline and also treat it like an attachment, but there are very few clients that do this. On the Mac side the ones I've found are Netscape (though you have to hit a toggle for it to work right), Mulberry (the interface was too much for me..), and Green (I liked this one the best, but it's a beta. I was unable to send any attachments with it, so it's no good for PBEM). If anyone can find another e-mail client that handles it, I'd love to know. I checked Claris Emailer, Outlook Express, Eudora, Power Mail, Musashi, and Mail Charm.

Now, there is a but of a work around. CM is smart enough to ignore any text before the PBEM file starts. So, all you have to do is save your file as text, and CM will read it fine. No editing is required. I know Eudora will split the mail into seperate chunks, but if you select all the chunks and do a save as, it will concatenate them.

Now as others have mentioned, you can also just zip the files. When their ziped, Netscape will attach them with the 'disposition-type' set to attachment, and any MIME compliant mail client will handle this correctly.