🚀 go-pugleaf

On 10 Jan 93 21:31:55 GMT, kosta@blues.kk.sub.org (Kosta Kostis) said:

kosta> (Alasdair Grant) writes:

Alasdair> Is there any convention for transmitting MIME messages if
Alasdair> extra mail headers (Content-Type etc.) cannot be used for one
Alasdair> reason or another?  Do any mailers understand messages whose
Alasdair> first (text) line begins "MIME-Version..." or something?

Good question, and good subsequent discussion. In particular I agree
with your idea that MIME can be used outside RFC based mail, for non RFC
based mail, or indeed for any sort of document encoding.

kosta> The MIME-headers should be in the headers only.

Is is so difficult to contemplate that this is not an option in some
mail systems, which are *not* RFC based, and have nothing to do with the
Internet? The Internet is large, but it is only one of many mail
domains.

kosta> Well, "my ideal" MTA would only analyse the headers of a message
kosta> needed for routing (if at all), transfer everything without
kosta> changing any bit (except adding "Received"-lines perhaps) and
kosta> forward the message to next next MTA on the way to the
kosta> receipient.

Within the Internet this is (barely) possible; within other mail systems
it is not. All they undertake is to deliver message bodies.

kosta> It's the MUA's job to interpret the content of the message, only,
kosta> but the MUA must know about the encoding used and stuff like
kosta> that.

kosta> but you'll have to tell your MUA manually to convert the message,
kosta> if at all possible. It's like using uuencode/uudecode.

What about defining an in-band, very obvious, "magic string", sort of
cookie, that says to a MUA (or to *any* file manipulation program), that
'hey this is a MIME thingie'? Then cookie aware MUAs can apply metamail
or whatever MIMEry automagically, even if it is impossible to tag the
message envelope appropriately or even if there is no envelope.

As long as the cookie is *standard*, and damn unlikely to occur as part
of "normal" text.

There ought to be an option within the MUA/file viewer with three
values:

  CHECK:	ask every time if the file should be MIMEd.
  ALWAYS:	MIME the file every time there is a MIME cookie.
  NEVER:	don't MIME the file even if there is a MIME cookie.

kosta> What's your problem changing header lines? Maybe we can help you
kosta> to do this somehow.

Often this is not an option. Some mail systems have fixed headers.
--
Piercarlo Grandi, Dept of CS, PC/UW@Aberystwyth <pcg@aber.ac.uk>
  E l'italiano cantava, cantava. E le sue disperate invocazioni giunsero
  alle orecchie del suo divino protettore, il dio della barzelletta