Subject: ELM-generated confusion for PINE

From: [email-masked] (David Mullaney)
Date: 7 Nov 1995 23:19:37 GMT

My work group, runs on HP-UX 9.07, with ELM (70.85) and PINE (3.91).
When any of my colleagues post an email from ELM, the first paragraph
(text followed by two or more carriage returns) is replaced with the
prompt: 

Parts/attachments:
   1   Shown  273 bytes  Message
   1.1 Shown    7 lines  Text
----------------------------------------

  [ Part 1: "Included Message" ]

To see the "Included Message", I have to work a few layers down through
the ViewAttach functionality.  A faster way to see it is to select (R)espond
and then (C)ancel when I'm finished reading, but that is neither elegant
nor convenient.  Other colleagues who use mh (or other MUAs) don't have
this problem.

What's going on?  Is there anything I can do to fix it?

--
+ DAVID MULLANEY  Mailstop #99, Loctn. 1UN5  (970) 229-7629 +
+  > Net: [email-masked] http://hpfcdn/   -*-  fax 2838 +
+  > Software Engineer -- Ignition/UDL/OSSD         /\/\/\  +
+  > Hewlett-Packard, Ft. Collins, Colorado  _-/\^^/      \ +

---

From: [email-masked] (Steven Loomis [Sir Lemon Stove])
Date: Wed, 08 Nov 1995 09:43:28 -0700

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (David
>    1   Shown  273 bytes  Message

 ELM, for some wacky reason is making the Content-Type of the top-level
 message "Message/rfc822".. This is really bizarre!  RFC 1521 states 
 that Message/rfc822 is for encapsulated messages. text/plain seems to
 be a much better choice for the toplevel content-type.

-- 
Steven R. Loomis  [email-masked]
Taligent, Inc. Cupertino, California, USA
http://www-dcg/srl           (Taligent internal)
http://www.sj-coop.net/~srl  (anywhere else)
All opinions are mine only, not Taligent's

---

From: [email-masked] (Steven Loomis [Sir Lemon Stove])
Date: Wed, 08 Nov 1995 10:31:29 -0700

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]

>  be a much better choice for the toplevel content-type.

I think I have figured this mystery out.

Since ELM is claiming that the BODY text of your message is itself another
 message, PINE (rightly so) is expecting your message to contain headers 
like To:, From: Date: and so on. The first paragraph of your coworker's
 message is considered to be the "header" part. It doesn't contain any 
headers PINE knows about, but that's OK (says pine), i'll just throw the
 unknown headers out.

I did an experiment on the mail that was sent to me. I put 
"\n\nFoo: bar\n\n" between the "real" headers and the text of his message.
 (\n is return, of course).  Then, the message appeared correctly and the
 Foo:bar was nowhere in sight.  If PINE had a "show full headers" command
 for encapsulated messages, well then it would work. Like you said,
 hitting reply is the only way to view it.

So to summarize:
 * this is a bug in HP's ELM -- it's putting the wrong content-type on messages.
 * pine seems to be working correctly -- although a "show full headers on
enclosures" command would be nice.
 * As a workaround, have your coworker hit return a couple of times so as
to leave some blank lines at the top of all messages he sends out.  This
seems to make pine behave correctly.