Subj : Enabling embedded pictures in Messages
To   : All
From : Tim Schattkowsky
Date : Thu Feb 10 2022 14:42:03

Hello All,

when using Fido today I regularly hit the wall when I notice that I would like 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 not 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 to 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/referenced
   pictures. This will be a lot to implement and particularly difficult to
   handle in 16-Bit software due to memory restrictions and lack of frameworks.
   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 a 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 instead of providing half a text processor for creating formatted text, people can just 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 kludge 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, but enabling the reader to automatically download such pictures and maybe include automated upload/linking of the image in the editor. However, that would be quite dependent on other services. 

*What do you think?*  

Regards,
Tim
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