Re: Why is MIME hard?

[Tim X]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> writes:

> On Sun, Sep 30 2007, Tim X wrote:
>
>> Recently, I have had problems with Apple mail attachments, but they
>> appear to be doing some strange stuff with their attachment handling
>> (it is embedded inside the html part of the mail message - so if
>> your configured like me to prefer the text version, you can't easily
>> access the attachment (this is fixed in dev VM)).
>
> Are you talking about attachments (e.g. images) inside
> multipart/related MIME parts?  If so, what Apple mail is doing is
> correct.  Cf. `gnus-mime-display-multipart-related-as-mixed' in Gnus:
>
> ,----[ (info "(gnus)MIME Commands") ]
> | `gnus-mime-display-multipart-related-as-mixed'
> |      Display "multipart/related" parts as "multipart/mixed".
> | 
> |      If displaying "text/html" is discouraged, see
> |      `mm-discouraged-alternatives', images or other material inside a
> |      "multipart/related" part might be overlooked when this variable is
> |      `nil'.  *Note Display Customization: (emacs-mime)Display
> |      Customization.
> `----
>

The attachments I was referring to in my case were word documents. From
memory, they were not multipart/related. I'm no expert on the MIME
standard, but various groups I asked this question on and posted examples
said that what Apple Mail was doing was not forbidden by the standard, but
it was an unusual interpretation. 

>From memory (and its been a while since I looked at one of these messages,
so I could be wrong), the atachment was inside the text/html part and was
not marked as multipart/alternative.  I did try opening it with gnus, but
this failed. I also tried it with mutt, but that failed as well. gmail was
able to give me the attachment. Note however, as I don't normally use gnus
for mail, the inability of gnus to access the attachment could easily be
due to mis/lack of ocnfiguration. 

Tim



-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au