At 9:42 AM -0400 4/9/01, James M Galvin is rumored to have typed:
> Ah, now I understand where you're coming from. I guess I'm too close to
> it all. I think section 5.2.1 from 2046 has what you're looking for:
Thanks. But have I mentioned how much I hate trying to find anything in
the entire RFC system? (Joke: How comes people are always asking for
comments, but never actually deciding on anything?)
> I also said I did it because in this case it is backwards compatible with
> MUAs that do not understand it.
Actually, this is the root of my problem. See, it _isn't_
backwards-compatable, at least with some clients which intepret it as
multipart/mixed and seperate out either the entire digest as an "attachment"
file, or as seperate files, one for each message - you can imagine how
frustrating that would be for the end user to read. Yes, I realize that bad
handling isn't the fault of the MIME type, but it _does_ exist. If I were
suicidal, I'd change one of my text/plain lists for a day and forward the
resultant howles of protest to the list to make the point...but I'm afraid
I'd be lynched before I could get them forwarded onward, so I won't.
I'm particularly concerned with multipart/mixed wrappers around
multipart/digest - clients not specifically designed to deal with them
(notice I am not singling out any specific large corporation here) could
(and, reportedly, do) create some serious havoc with these messages. (I kinda
like the way Roger Fajman reported LISTSERV handling it, by forcing the TOC
to a message/, though. Might be interesting to set up a test list that did
that.)
Charlie
