Re: [SOLVED] wrong message size

On Wednesday July 14 2010 22:12:58 Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> On Wednesday 14 July 2010, Dj YB wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > kmail 1.13.3
> > 
> > Does anyone else see a wrong size for messages?
> > I got two messages with attachments, the messages size shown is 135%
> > of the true size.
> 
> I suppose you compared the size of the saved attachment with the message
> size. The thing is that in email only text is allowed. Therefore binary
> attachments have to be converted to text for inclusion in an email
> message (tech speak: the attachments are base64-encoded). As the name of
> the encoding suggests it uses 64 different symbols (52 letters, 10
> numbers and 2 additional characters). 64 symbols are equivalent to 6
> bits. Binary data needs 8 bits. So, if you encode 3 bytes (= 24 bits) of
> binary data with the base64-codec then you get 4 text symbols (because
> 24 = 4*6). Consequently, if you encode 1 MB of binary data you get
> roundabout 1.33 MB of text (which is 133 % of the size of the binary
> data).
> 
> Conclusion: Sending large binary attachments via email is inefficient
> and probably even expensive if you have to pay for the amount of data
> you upload. It's much better to upload large binary files to an online
> store where the recipients can download it from.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Ingo

Thanks a lot, Ingo
There is always something you can learn, even from mail size...

Regards,
YB.