Subject: re: attachments

From: John Stumbles <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 12:43:10 BST

> On Wed, 13 Apr 1994, I (John Stumbles) wrote:
> > ...when a message is received with an attachment, pine asks if you want to 
save/view part 1 or 2 ... part 1 is the plain text mail message you get to read 
anyway as soon as you go into the message... so what is the point of this - the 
part you want to save or view is always part 2 ...so why not have part 1 == 1st 
attachment ... etc ?

to which David L Miller replied:

> Pine and some other mailers use the _convention_ that the first part of a
> multipart message is the text body...

And Terry Gray also replied:
> ... removing
> the ability to specify the first MIME body part is not such a good idea,
> for two reasons:
>
> 1. Using the attachment viewer's save option is currently the only way to
>    save a message without any headers.
>
> 2. Other mailers may generate "first" body parts that are not ascii text.
>    In this case, it is important to be able to explicitly specify #1.

Thanks David and Terry,

When I first came across a message with an attachment I was confused to find 
that asking to view attachment number 1 put me back into viewing the plain 
message. I was in naive user mode, and I am guessing that other naive users 
would find it similarly confusing (even with the attachment view/save interface 
cleaned up).

I do think attachment number 1 should be the first actual attachment - if (as 
Terry suggests) it is necessary or desirable to be able to invoke the 
attachment view/save mechanism for the body, couldn't this be referred to as 
part 0 ?? That way the smart users would be able to do what they want, and the 
naive users would get what they expect when they do what comes naturally - 
which is the pine philosophy, n'est ce pas?

BTW Terry, I don't understand your second point - I thought email message 
bodies were exclusively ascii text (give or take some differences in national 
character sets) - isn't this what attachments are all about? Surely if anyone 
produces a mailer that sends out first body parts that are not ascii, 99.99% of 
other mailers won't be able to read it without fiddling about, and it isn't 
going to be very popular?

John Stumbles                                       [email-masked]
University of Reading                                              0734 318435
Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 2AF, UK
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From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 09:22:02 -0700 (PDT)

> would find it similarly confusing (even with the attachment view/save interface 

Your point is well taken.  Hopefully we can clear it up with the redesign.

> which is the pine philosophy, n'est ce pas?

Actually, Pine doesn't make it available, but I believe the underlying 
c-client code calls the message headers part 0.  

> going to be very popular?

Attachments are a Pine concept, not a MIME concept.  To be minimally
conformant to the MIME specification, a mailer must be able to handle *any*
mix of content-types in a reasonable fashion.  For example, I have heard of
sites experimenting with voice-mail via MIME, in which case there would be no
purpose in having anything but the audio/basic content.  Any MIME mailer
should be able to at least save it to a file... 

> Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 2AF, UK

|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing, JE-20
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA