From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tim X Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Why is MIME hard? Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2007 23:28:22 +1000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <87r6kg8eq1.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au> References: <1190902460.055800.73670@y42g2000hsy.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1191159780 20383 80.91.229.12 (30 Sep 2007 13:43:00 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2007 13:43:00 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Sep 30 15:42:57 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1Ibz4R-0007b2-HR for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 30 Sep 2007 15:42:55 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Ibz4N-0003XR-S2 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 30 Sep 2007 09:42:51 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!newsfeed.freenet.de!213.239.142.3.MISMATCH!border-2.ams.xsnews.nl!feed.xsnews.nl!border-1.ams.xsnews.nl!sn-xt-ams-06!sn-xt-ams-04!sn-post-ams-02!sn-post-ams-01!sn-post-sjc-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.1.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:XZXvkIl7jOd256qwRznfokPmpac= Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Original-Lines: 58 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:152488 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:47997 Archived-At: Girish Kulkarni writes: > I know this has been asked here many times before, but I'd be glad if > someone explains in a less esoteric manner. > > I recently started reading my mail in Emacs and tried VM in XEmacs > 21.4 and Rmail in GNU Emacs 21.1.1. While I have settled on Rmail for > last couple of weeks I found that the lack of MIME support was > bothering me. > > 0. How can I receive messages with MIME? (Attachments, HTML > messages, ...) > 1. How can I send messages with MIME? (basically attachments) > > The oft-quoted page http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/~trey/emacs/mime.html > seems to have stopped existing and I have been through the Emacs MIME > manual. But the real reason for posting this here is my inability to > guess a philosophy behind making MIME so hard in Emacs. Can't it be > any simpler? Also, someone commented on comp.mail.mime that I had to > "let go of Rmail and use Gnus or Mew instead" if I wanted MIME. Is > that really so? > I use VM with no real problems. However, to your wider question, I think the problem is that the MIME standard seems to be open to interpretation or some some vendors just ignore the standards. For example, I regularly get HTML e-mail messages that do not rendor correctly. However, when you look at them, almost 100% of the time, they violate some aspect of the MIME standard (at least in my interpretation of the standard - and I guess that proves part of my point). 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)). As the standard seems to be open to interpretation and as some vendors just ignore it anyway, writing and maintaining a mail reader that is able to read all the various formats and which is maintained in a timely manner and can keep up with new versions/interpretations etc, is not a trivial task. I run mew and VM and find that they do OK. The latest version of VM seems to handle apple mail attachments (Mew still seems to have problems). I guess the issue isn't so much that it is hard, but mrore that there are not enough people available for all the various mail readers supported under Emacs to keep all of them up to date. I don't know what the situation is with rmail, but believe it can be configured to handle nearly all 'well defined/implemented' mail extensions, but possibly won't handle those that are not MIME compliant (in the stricter sense). Tim P.S. Please don't encourage HTML mail - it is a curse that should be forever relegated to the "Bad idea" bin! -- tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au