Re: forwarding messages with attachments
On 2007-03-14, Derek Martin <invalid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 14, 2007 at 04:03:00PM -0700, Ray Van Dolson wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 14, 2007 at 06:55:48PM -0400, Derek Martin wrote:
> > > Is there a way to make Mutt deal with this properly? I can't imagine
> > > that the audience of Mutt (largely sysadmins and programmers and such)
> > > hasn't run into this problem before... The normal way I handle this
> > > is to save the original body to a text file, mime_forward the message
> > > components *excluding* the body, and then while composing my own body,
> > > read the original body into my editor, manually marking it up to
> > > distinguish it from what I've written.
> >
> > Definitely interested in hearing the discussion on this one as well.. in the
> > past I've relied on 'b' to bounce the message on to someone when I needed to
> > preserve the attachments as-is, but this obviously doesn't allow you to
> > (easily) edit the contents of the message first. At least not in a way
> > compareable to how other mailers do it.
>
> If bouncing is enough for you, then probably it will be enough for you to
> add this to your muttrc (or make a macro to do it when you need it, or
> something):
>
> set mime_forward
>
> But again, this does not (AFAICT) allow you to easily edit the
> original body. In fact, it's really annoying in another way: it
> includes the *headers* from the original message in-line in the body,
> but not the original body itself... But then the entire message is
> included (with headers) in the first attachment.
>
> I consider this to be utterly and completely broken, and I'm
> considering reporting it as a bug, but I'm waiting to see what other
> people think. It's shocking to me that people have not previously
> complained loudly enough about this to get it changed; but that just
> leads me to think that some people actually *like* this behavior,
> which boggles my mind. It might even "bottle" my mind. ;-)
I think it works to:
1. go to the attachment menu;
2. tag all the message parts;
3. type ";f" (without quotes) to forward everything;
4. answer "yes" to "Forward as attachments? ([no]/yes):";
5. save away the stuff that appears in your editor;
6. exit editor;
7. delete first attachment;
8. edit what was the second attachment;
9. insert stuff saved away previously.
Never mind. Yuck!
I've thought about fixing this on several occasions, but the gap
between thinking about fixing it and actually fixing it has always
been too great. One of my excuses has been that I thought I should
first understand what all the "mime forward" settings do, and their
behavior depends on the content-type and the associated mailcap
rules, so the set of all combinations of settings and rules was
discouragingly large. Also, I have a solution for forwarding
messages with non-text attachments and I don't forward text
attachments often enough to become irritated enough with the current
behavior to find the time to fix it.
As far as complaining about it goes: I figured that everyone else
who works on the mutt code is just as busy as I am and if I couldn't
find the time to do it, I couldn't expect anyone else to. I don't
think it's really a bug, either, but a missing feature.
Regards,
Gary
--
Gary Johnson | Agilent Technologies
garyjohn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | Mobile Broadband Division
http://www.spocom.com/users/gjohnson/mutt/ | Spokane, Washington, USA