Subject: text/html

From: "S. Alexander Jacobson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 15:55:30 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)

I get various mail with

content-type: text/html

Pine does not seem to know that this is html and
renders it as text/plain.  I don't think MIME
REQUIRES a charset, but MIME seems to want one.

Any workaround?

-Alex-

___________________________________________________________________
S. Alexander Jacobson                   i2x Media
1-212-787-1914 voice                    1-603-288-1280 fax

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From: Christopher Fisk <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 08:35:03 -0500 (EST)

>REQUIRES a charset, but MIME seems to want one.

I'm not sure of any workarounds for this, but I did create a special
folder for all files that come in with text/html.  "Spammers"

I've never received a text/html message that didn't contain a CHARSET that
was legitimate mail.

My procmail script:

:0 f
*       ^Content-type: text/html
* !     html; charset=
* !     from hotmail
| ${FORMAIL} -A"X-Spammers: text/html only message"

Now I understand you probably aren't worried about being able to read spam
and have something coming in legitimate with text/html without a charset
set, but in over 500 messages that have been caught by this filter.
*NONE* have been anything but spam.

Christopher Fisk

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From: Stephen Casner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 10:46:03 -0800 (PST)

> I've never received a text/html message that didn't contain a CHARSET that

I have just received a membership renewal message from ACM that serves
as a counterexample (ACM is a well-established organization and I am a
member).  I can't tell from the header what software was used to send
the mail.

What's the ruling on this?  Is the message format non-compliant, and
therefore I should send a complaint to ACM, or should Pine be more
liberal in what it accepts?
							-- Steve

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From: Cliff Green <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 13:48:21 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)

And it came to pass that, on Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Stephen Casner wrote:

SC>On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, Christopher Fisk wrote:
SC>> On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, S. Alexander Jacobson wrote:
SC>> >I get various mail with
SC>> >
SC>> >content-type: text/html
SC>> >
SC>> >Pine does not seem to know that this is html and
SC>> >renders it as text/plain.  I don't think MIME
SC>> >REQUIRES a charset, but MIME seems to want one.
SC>> >
SC>> >Any workaround?
[munch]
SC>What's the ruling on this?  Is the message format non-compliant, and
SC>therefore I should send a complaint to ACM, or should Pine be more
SC>liberal in what it accepts?

I vote to say the sender's message is "non-compliant".

Every time I've gotten a message that behaves like that, it was missing
some critical header.  Like the last one I got (1/2 an hour ago), which
was missing the following header:

Mime-version: 1.0

Insert header, pine renders it properly.

c
-- 
Cliff Green
Academic Computing Services - UMDNJ
signature under NDA

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From: Stephen Casner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 13:02:02 -0800 (PST)

> Insert header, pine renders it properly.

Aha!  That applies to my example message from ACM as well.

Indeed, the MIME spec (RFC 2045) says:

   Messages composed in accordance with this document MUST include such
   a header field, with the following verbatim text:

     MIME-Version: 1.0

							-- Steve

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From: "S. Alexander Jacobson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 16:05:51 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)

>    a header field, with the following verbatim text:

Ok, but it does not specify behavior when this
header is absent.  It is not clear that the
appropriate behavior is to ignore content-type
when the header is absent.  It seems much more
reassonable to assume 1.0 unless something else is
sent.

-Alex-

---

From: Stephen Casner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 13:40:37 -0800 (PST)

> reassonable to assume 1.0 unless something else is

Yes, it does say that the requirement for this field is to allow
backward compatible operation with pre-MIME standards, and that the
MIME interpretation of Content-type is an extension of the the
definition in RFC 1049.  That RFC does not include "text/html" as one
of the defined types, which were

   type:=           "POSTSCRIPT"/"SCRIBE"/"SGML"/"TEX"/"TROFF"/
                    "DVI"/"X-"atom

(Note no major/minor structure which was created for MIME types.)
Furthermore, RFC 1049 now has status HISTORIC.

So, I'd say Pine is on solid ground from a standards perspective, but
the question is whether it would be a good idea or bad idea for Pine
to pander to morons.
							-- Steve

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From: "S. Alexander Jacobson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 16:52:58 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)

> the question is whether it would be a good idea or bad idea for Pine

Supporting major/minor content types does
not break legacy compatibility with modern
MIME or with RFC 1049 (which was my point).

But, yes, we are talking about pandering to
morons.

If you don't like this, wait until you find out
what dumb stuff msft has done with uuencoding.
(pine will soon have to disallow begin with B
capitalized!)

-Alex-