Subject: A question

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 18:58:54 +0200

I've started receiving mail containing two parts.  The first part is
usually a few lines of ASCII text.  The second part is about 2.9KB
long and PINE 3.91 identifies it as application/MS-TNEF.  The only
thing I can do with the second part is save it to a file but it is made
as an html file,so when i tried to open it from my one of the browsers
i´ve got(netscape 3.01 and Explorer 3.02)it shows me extrange text... 
.  I asked someone who
sent me such a message what he was doing,and he answered me that he was
using Internet exchange and after I warned him about this application/ms
tnef which appared in each e-mail it he told me:it must be happening
that the exchange is not going well(?),and he was going to change the
e-mail application client.He didn't indicate he had done anything
different
when sending the mail without the attachment.

So, what is the MS-TNEF attachment?  Why is it called an application?
What causes it to be sent?  Is it necessary?  If not, how can it be
avoided?

-- 
Sonia Pi Corrales
  [email-masked]
    "http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/4118"

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From: [email-masked] (Dana Booth)
Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 06:14:05 GMT

[email-masked] wrote:

: I've started receiving mail containing two parts.  The first part is
: usually a few lines of ASCII text.  The second part is about 2.9KB
: long and PINE 3.91 identifies it as application/MS-TNEF.  The only

: So, what is the MS-TNEF attachment?  Why is it called an application?
: What causes it to be sent?  Is it necessary?  If not, how can it be
: avoided?

Just today, I was farting around with M$ 'outlook express', the mail
client that comes with new version of Internet Explorer. I sent myself
a piece of mail, and retrieved it using AK-Mail, another win95 mail
client. To my surprise, right under my test message text there appeared
some html tags with the same message. I did it again, but this time
picked up the mail with Netscape (version 4.0 pr#4), and the html tags
did not appear, only the test message. Netscape mail, though, is html
aware, so I came to the conclusion that M$'s mail utils are sending
html mail, but with plain text as a default. For non-html aware clients,
such as Pine (and my AK-Mail), I suppose that M$ is inserting a boundary
between the plain text and the html enabled mail text.

Anyway, after you save the attachment, have you looked at it with just
a plain old file viewer? Since you're using Pine, you must have Pilot,
just load it up there and see if it's the same message between html
tags.

--

----------------------------
Dana Booth <[email-masked]>
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