bug#9840: 23.3; rmail-edit-current-message destroys MIME messages [SEVERE]

[Mark Lillibridge <mark.lillibridge@hp.com>]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>  > From: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
>  > Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:56:13 -0500
>  > Cc: 9840@debbugs.gnu.org, mark.lillibridge@hp.com
>  > 
>  > 
>  > http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=9840
>  > 
>  > seems like a pretty serious problem with Emacs 23.3+'s rmail mime
>  > handling. Any ideas on how to fix this?
>  
>  Do the equivalent of `v' (rmail-mime) to get the rmail-view-buffer to
>  its original non-MIME state, let the user edit it, then replace the
>  message text in the rmail-buffer (mbox format) with the results of
>  editing, and redisplay the message?

    I think that's what 'e' should do.  Note that 'v' currently fails to
show the raw message -- I haven't had a chance to submit a complaint
about that behavior yet.  Should think about fixing bug 9841 while
you're at it.  I'm thinking at the moment we should just refuse to
accept edits that include (new) From lines, allowing the user to decide
how they want to quote them manually.  (Put point on start of From line
and signal an error?)

    In the future, (this probably qualifies as a wish list item), it
would be nice if there was a way to edit individual MIME parts.  For
example, hitting 'E' adds [edit] buttons to each MIME part.  Selecting
such a button brings up the new edit buffer with the contents of that
decoded MIME part.  After the user edited the part, it would be
re-encoded and replace the original version in the original message.
This extension would make it easy to edit printable and base64 parts.
Trying to synchronize the two buffers might be a pain though so this
extension probably needs more thought before trying implement anything.

- Mark