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Re: [Mutt] #3067: PGP/MIME signatures incorrectly assigned



#3067: PGP/MIME signatures incorrectly assigned "Content-Disposition: inline"

Comment (by jrollins):

 In multi-part email, all of the body parts are commonly called
 attachments, which should not influence how a given part is displayed.
 This is what Thomas mentions above, and I completely agree with this
 statement.  What *is* meant to influence how a given part is displayed
 is the Content-Disposition header.  This is the point of this header,
 to suggest to MUAs how a particular part should be displayed if the
 MUA is unfamiliar it's MIME type.

 OpenPGP signatures, as PGP/MIME type parts, should, by the most
 enlightened MUAs, be processed as OpenPGP signatures, and the outcome
 of that processing should be displayed to the user.

 MUAs that are unfamiliar with or unable to process PGP/MIME parts
 should look to the Content-Disposition header to determine how to
 display the part.

 MUAs that can not process signatures and are currently displaying
 PGP/MIME parts from mutt inline (ie. gmail) are in fact doing the
 right thing since they are honoring the Content-Disposition header as
 set.  MUAs can of course choose to ignore the Content-Disposition and
 display the part as they wish, but that is up to them, and they do so
 at their own peril.

 I think this argument shows clearly that parts with
 Content-Disposition set to "inline" should be displayed inline, and
 parts with Content-Disposition set to "attachment" should be displayed
 as attachments.  Conversely, parts that should be displayed inline
 should have Content-Disposition set to "inline", and parts that should
 be displayed as attachments should have Content-Disposition set to
 "attachment".

 The question that remains is about how PGP/MIME parts should be
 displayed by MUAs that can not process them.  Unprocessed PGP/MIME
 parts are meaningless character strings, and should therefore never be
 displayed inline.  Thus the Content-Disposition for PGP/MIME parts
 should not be "inline".  I think jmcclelland, dkg, and I have all
 argued for this fairly persuasively.  If this reasoning is correct,
 then the Content-Disposition of PGP/MIME parts should be set to
 "attachment" and what mutt is currently doing is wrong.

 I understand that making a new user-configurable variable for this
 would be too much work.  I therefore believe that the most logical
 solution is to change to Content-Disposition for PGP/MIME parts to be
 "attachment".  Since this is a fairly trivial change, I hope that we
 can see it in a future version.

 Thank you very much for your attention to this matter.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.mutt.org/trac/ticket/3067#comment:8>