In this section I'm going to try to answer the most commonly asked general questions. For more specialized areas of questions, you'll find separate FAQs for those in the appropriate Web sections.
Q: I received a file (picture, program, ZIP file, whatever) as an attachment to an E-mail message, but something's wrong... it's just a bunch of random-looking characters, and I can't make my [viewer/other program] load it.
A: E-mail messages cannot directly contain anything other than ASCII text. Therefore, to send anything that is not plain ASCII text, it must be "encoded" to a form that is. Some mail software will automatically recognize and decode such attachments, but others will not. If yours does not, (and if it did, you probably wouldn't be reading here) when you've received such a message, you need to save it to a file on your disk, and then run a suitable "decode" program on the file. The decode program will (hopefully) produce an exact copy of the originally encoded binary file.
If you're running in a DOS (and/or Windows, but this one is a DOS program) environment, one nice decoder program that I've found is called "uu". You should be able to download a copy of it (it's only about 6K bytes) by setting your Web browser to save to disk, and then clicking to download the "uu" decode program. The file "uu.com" you've downloaded should be exactly 6257 bytes long, please verify this before running the program. Once you have it, simply use the command (at the DOS command line) "uu filename" (where filename is the name of the text file you saved to disk, containing the encoded file data) and the "uu" program should find and decode all the encoded files that are contained in the text file, even if they are in multiple segments. Note that you do NOT need to edit out any extraneous data in the file before using the "uu" program..
Some people have reported problems in downloading the "uu.com" program above, so I have an alternate form of it that's been ZIPped and should have better integrity verification. Set your Web browser to save to disk, then click to download the ZIPped copy of the "uu" program. You can use PKUNZIP -T UUCOM.ZIP to verify that the ZIP file has been downloaded successfully (and if it hasn't, you might try PKZIPFIX to try to repair the ZIP file... it's easier to repair a slightly corrupted ZIP file than to repair a slightly corrupted ".com" file).
There are dozens of different ways that files are often encoded, and "uu" doesn't handle ALL of them. But it will handle most of them, and generally works pretty well. It can even handle multi-part encoded files, and can even sort the parts if necessary (add the option "/s" to the command line).
Q. I've received a picture file, but now that I have it, how can I see it?
A. One of the best viewer programs I've seen is called LVIEW. It runs in a DOS/Windows environment, and it has lots of really great features. If you have access to FTP, you really ought to download a copy of this program as well. You can probably find the latest version in the CICA windows archives, or elsewhere on the Net. (I'm not including it for direct download here, because it's relatively large and I only have a limited amount of space here at my Web site).
Q. I've tried displaying pictures, but every time I do, the colors come out looking really strange or grainy.
A. This graininess usually results from what is called "dithering", which is a way of trying to approximate an exact color by using several other colors in close proximity to each other. Your display card is probably running at a low "color depth" (the number of colors you can display at one time). For best display of pictures, you need a display card which can run at 32768, 65535, or 16 million colors (also known as 24-bit "true color" mode). You might even have one which will do this already, if you simply configure it correctly. When you got your computer or display card, you should have received a diskette with suitable drivers, and the information you'll need to set your display card to the appropriate mode. (Using a large color depth is especially important when you are scanning a picture which you intend for display by others... since otherwise many scanner programs will save the same grainy, dithered image you're seeing, and prevent others who do have good display cards from seeing it properly, either.)
Note that there is generally a tradeoff between color depth and display resolution (usually you have to go to a lower resolution display mode to get greater color depth, or a lower color depth to switch to a higher resolution). This is because greater color depth and higher resolution both require more memory on the display card, and the amount you have typically is a limiting factor.
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This page and all linked contents originating with me are Copyright (C) 1995-6 by Gordon E. Peterson II, all rights reserved worldwide. Last revised January 10, 1996.