Attachment Types

If you want to send me an attached file or message part in a format other than as described in the table below, please check with me first to find out if I can actually handle it. Note that some mail programs may not indicate to you that alternative versions of a message are attachments—they are actually sent as attachments. You can also send otherwise acceptable files compressed with zip, gzip, bzip2, or compress, or in file archives (either tarballs or ZIP files—no StuffIt, please).

The customary suffixes are given for information only; I care about the content of attachments, not their names.

Category	File formats	Customary suffixes
`text/plain` part; text file	plain text	`[none], .txt`
`text/html` part; web page	plain text with simple* HTML markup	`.html, .htm`
image	JPEG or PNG preferred, others acceptable	`.jpg, .jpeg, .png`
unprocessed words	plain text with TeX markup	`.tex`
processed words	PostScript, PDF, TeX DVI	`.ps, .pdf, .dvi`
source code	plain text	`.f90, .f, .c, .h, ...`

*By "simple", I mean something that looks like it was written by a sane, non-obsessive human, with a high content-to-markup ratio. (Machine-generated HTML, can be awfully bloated and broken, so don't send me any of that.)

My mail reader is set up to prefer the text/plain version of a message over the text/html version when both are present.

I do have software that can handle Microsoft Office files—usually with some sort of breakage, but text generally comes through. (PDF versions of such documents would be much more welcome.)