Re: [TCLUG:11699] Messages As Attachments [was Re: [TCLUG:11633]Ipaddress timouts]

[Thomas Veldhouse <veldy@visi.com>]

It is quite clear that Part #1 is referring to an attachment.  It is not
any kind of standard to display or not display an attachment in the body
of a message.  I think you will find the AOL client does something similar
(at least emails I get from AOL folks often has quoted messages as
attachments).  I personally prefer that to some of the other methods in a
windowing environment - except in this case.  Why must the body of a
message be sent as an attachment?  Don't you find this odd behaviour?  In
the past, signed messages have always been part of the body of the
message, signature included.  This seems most rational to me.  Can MUTT be
configured to do this?  Then everybody here would be happy, don't you
think?

Anyway, I have stated my opinion on the matter and I think further
discussion is becoming pointless, but we shall see.  Everybody can do what
they feel is the correct thing to do, but there is little point to
cluttering this list further (but I don't have to have the final word).

Tom Veldhouse
veldy@visi.com

On Thu, 30 Dec 1999, Dave Sherohman wrote:

> 
> 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+
> 
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