Some guidelines for Posting MIDIs ...

When posting MIDIs you do this to share/trade them with other users from a.b.s.m - so keep in mind to give them the MIDIs in a most suitable way - just like that you love to receive the MIDIs ,-)

• Use meaningful filenames - posting a MIDI "bouhml-2.mid" without any further descriptions surely is no suitable way - if the receipient doesn´t know the MIDI, he´s unable to save it with a usefull name, and even if he knows the MIDI, he will forget after a few days what song it was. If possible use long filenames like "Bat Out Of Hell (Meat Loaf).mid"
• Use reasonable subject lines - keep in mind that on most news clients only the first 30 to 40 chars are visible in the message list. So posting a bunch of MIDIs with a subject line of "Here are some great MIDIs you must download immediately: Bat out of Hell (Meat Loaf)" will give the users a useless list like that below. Got it? ,-)
  

     Here are some great MIDIs you must download immediately: Bat out
     Here are some great MIDIs you must download immediately: Hot Som
     Here are some great MIDIs you must download immediately: Three o
     Here are some great MIDIs you must download immediately: I´ll do

• Include title and artist in the subject line - if the user can´t save long filenames (see next section) this enables him to find a suitable filename for himself. And even if the user can save long filenames, this allows him a selection of the mails for downloading, as most clients in a first step only downloading headers (subject lines) from the news server. Without a suitable subject line one must download each body to see what MIDI it is - and it´s annoying and wasting time and money to download MIDIs which are already onhand or which one doesn´t like. In the subject line first type the artist or band, then the title. When posting more than one title of an artist or band, this is clearly arranged and though easy to read.
• Keep the poor 8.3-users in mind - many users from a.b.s.m are still running Windows 3.x or another operating system which doesn´t support long filenames. The news clients there are renaming files automatically to filenames with numberings like "name-1.mid", "name-2.mid" and so on when the first eight chars are identical. So if you post a series of MIDIs by the Eagles and the filenames are like "Eagles - Hotel California.mid", "Eagles - Desperado.mid" and "Eagles - New Kid In Town.mid" the poor 8.3-user will get "eagles-1.mid", "eagles-2.mid" and "eagles-3.mid" - nice, eyh ,-) But if you use filenames like "Hotel California (Eagles).mid", "Desperado (Eagles).mid" and "New Kid In Town (Eagles).mid" the happy 8.3-users gets "HotelCal.mid", "Desperad.mid" and "NewKidIn.mid" - some more usable, or?
• Don´t be confused ,-) - OK, short summary: in the subject line first type artist or band, then title - in the filename just go the other way - first title, then artist or band...
• Avoid spaces/blanks in filenames - on some outdated operating systems :-) spaces in filenames are causing problems - so don´t use spaces in filenames, use the underscore "_" instead.
• Avoid special chars in filenames - on some outdated operating systems :-) special chars like the abostrophes or tildes may cause problems - so dont use them, use "A" to "Z", "a" to "z", "0" to "9" and the underscore "_".
• All Words With Uppercase in filenames - on some operating systems the file system is casesensitive - the files "Bat out of Hell.mid" and "Bat Out Of Hell.Mid" are not identical! So if you get to use all words in filenames in uppercase, this helps users of such operating systems to avoid dupes.
• Don´t post lyrics ,-) - The group a.b.s.m is for MIDIs only, point the requesters of lyrics to http://www.lyrics.ch or to news:alt.music.lyrics or send them the lyrics by email/post them to alt.music.lyrics...
  

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