bug#6081: 23.1; emacs23 and etach

[enno . vet]

New rmail.el isn't compatible with etach.el (J. Rulnick's MIME extension for 
emacs) anymore.
The change in the file format from BABYL to mbox isn't necessary the culprit, 
but the introduction of rmail-attr-array seems to be crucial:  apparently it 
offers only 8 possible different 'attributes', and the `detached' attribute 
that etach wants to make use of is not among them.  Thus rmail complains: 
"Unknown attribute `detached'", and etach cannot carry on with its business.  
Trying to simply add the `detached' attribute to rmail-attr-array -- with my 
extremely limited knowledge of lisp -- merely leads to further different 
errors, like rmail's "Warning: corrupt attribute header in message".  Trying to 
add the attribute as a label instead doesn't work either.

Alas, if there is no working etach or similar tool available to DETACH 
attachments from the rmail file (i.e. to save them elsewhere, not within the 
RMAIL file), my humble self and all the other folk complaining about this very 
problem will have to go without emacs as a mailer and switch to mutt or 
something else in the future :(


In GNU Emacs 23.1.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.18.2)
 of 2009-11-02 on raven, modified by Debian
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.10605000
configured using `configure  '--build=i486-linux-gnu' '--host=i486-linux-gnu' 
'--prefix=/usr' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib' '--libexecdir=/usr/lib' 
'--localstatedir=/var/lib' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' 
'--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--with-pop=yes' 
'--enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs23:/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/23.1/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/23.1/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/23.1/leim'
 '--with-x=yes' '--with-x-toolkit=gtk' '--with-toolkit-scroll-bars' 
'build_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'host_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'CFLAGS=-DDEBIAN -g 
-O2' 'LDFLAGS=-g' 'CPPFLAGS=''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: C
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: de_AT
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: de_AT@euro
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: nil
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Fundamental

Minor modes in effect:
  which-function-mode: t
  tooltip-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  global-auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Recent input:
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <menu-bar> <help-menu> <send-emacs-bug
-report>

Recent messages:
Loading 00debian-vars...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50dpkg-dev.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50git-core.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50lilypond-data.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50pspp.el (source)...done
Loading /home/enno/.emacs.d/etach.el (source)...done
Loading which-func...done
For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.