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Re: [TCLUG:11699] Messages As Attachments [was Re: [TCLUG:11633] Ipaddresstimouts]



I know better than to get involved in this, but...

Thomas Veldhouse said:
> On Thu, 30 Dec 1999, Eric M. Hopper wrote:
> > 	If your mailer doesn't understand multipart/signed well enough
> > to give you the unsigned text without having to open an attachment, it's
> > time for a new mailer.
> > 
> I use Outlook Express 5.0 when in Windows.  I think that is new enough,
> don't you?

Eric didn't say anything about having a 'new enough' client.  He did say
something about having one that understands multipart/signed well enough.

If you're having this problem in OE5, I suspect that a) part of the problem
is standard MS feature bloat and b) an older version of OE would probably
handle it just fine.  (I've used Outlook, but never OE, though, so I could be
wrong about b.  For that matter, the current Outlook may handle
multipart/signed properly as well.)

> No, it is not like that at all.  You could sign your message in the
> traditional way and there would not be a problem with ANY mail program.

Umm...  The multipart/signed works fine in elm, which is neither terribly new
nor known for a rich feature set...  At the top of Eric's messages, it
displays

---
[Part #1: Type: text/plain, Encoding: quoted-printable, Size: 1567]
---

followed by the text.  Then at the end of his messages, I get

---
[Part #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Encoding: 7bit, Size: 233]

[application/pgp-signature is not supported, skipping...]
[Use 'v' to view or save this part.]

[Part #3: Type: text/plain, Encoding: 7bit, Size: 191]
---

followed by the list's unsubscribe/additional commands information.  (Which
is what part 3 contains.)  All text/* sections are displayed, non-text parts
are ignored, but made available to me if I choose to track them down.  IMO,
this is The Right Way to handle messages.  (An argument could me made that
all sections renderable by the mail client should be immediately displayed,
but that gets dangerous with things like Word documents.)

As Eric stated earlier, if your mail client refuses to display text/plain
without having to open it as an attachment, then your client is behaving in
an extremely brain-damaged manner and needs to be replaced.

As for the way that Eric's PGP signature is being attached to his messages,
I'm not up on the relevant RFCs, but it appears to be a perfectly legitimate
(if not entirely normal) application of MIME.  Personally, I'm no big fan of
MIME and I think it tends to be overused.  I also think that making a
signature (of any sort) into a separate MIME part in a message that would
otherwise be plain (non-MIME) text is silly, at best, and should generally be
avoided.

But that's my opinion.  Doing so remains a correct and legitimate use of the
standard.  If OE5 can't cope with that, then OE5's MIME support is lacking.

-- 
Geek Code 3.1:  GCS d- s+: a- C++ UL++$ P+>+++ L++>++++ E- W--(++) N+ o+ !K
w---$ O M- !V PS+ PE Y+ PGP t 5++ X+ R++ tv- b++ DI++++ D G e* h+ r++ y+