[kdepim-users] wrong message size

[Ingo Klöcker]

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
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