Re: RMAIL, MIME-related bug

[Alexander Pohoyda]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

> > When we convert the email to babyl format, we can do some
> > MIME-related processing on it, for example: all text/* bodyparts
> > may be transfer-encoding (quoted-printable and base64) decoded,
> > PGP/GPG signatures verified, PGP/GPG decryption done, header
> > fields of type =?...?B?...?= decoded (RFC 2047) and unfolded (RFC
> > 2822), etc. This needs to be done once. No information is lost in
> > this step. No structure information is lost either.
> 
> In order not to lose information, you need to keep the GPG
> signatures you have just verified since you can't re-create them
> yourself.

Sure, I'm just hiding that bodypart at display time.

>                                                             Of
> course, you also need to keep the signed-text unless you're
> super-extra-careful to make sure that you can re-create the exact
> same byte-sequence from the rest of the data, which is rather
> unlikely.

OK, let's keep the signed text un-changed, but I would prefer to do
the decoding on normal messages. As Eli points out, this is logical
to do once on message arrival.


> Why do people even consider doing any processing at that point?

Just to optimise the process. Doing it every time in show-message is
even simplier from the programmer's point of view.


> The processing should be done for display and nothing else, because
> any other option will make you lose information at some point and
> also forces you to have code to re-create the original format,
> whereas the "display-side processing" approach only needs to parse
> MIME but never needs to re-construct it.

You are right, but let's focus on the need not to invent the
RMAIL-MIME, no additional header in between the message. Do you agree
that hiding header fields is preferred to having two message headers?


-- 
Alexander Pohoyda <address@hidden>
PGP Key fingerprint: 7F C9 CC 5A 75 CD 89 72  15 54 5F 62 20 23 C6 44