Re: Why is MIME hard?

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

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