Re: multipart/alternative question
On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 12:48:45AM -0500, Kyle Wheeler wrote:
> On Thursday, July 16 at 10:51 PM, quoth lee:
> >On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 10:16:57PM -0500, Kyle Wheeler wrote:
> >
> >> But anyway, I don't consider this message to have ANY "attachments".
> >> The person didn't send me any extra files to look at. They sent me the
> >> same message twice, one with extra formatting and one without. I don't
> >> think most people would consider that to be a message with
> >> "attachments", so I don't think mutt should say that there is an
> >> attachment.
> >
> >Well, I would consider such a message as attachment only: No message
> >(i. e. no body), only three attachments.
>
> Logically, an "attachment" needs something to be attached TO.
Ok, maybe I should have that expressed less ambiguous. What you get is
a message (RFC822) that doesn't have a body (or has an empty body). To
this message, something is attached.
> The MIME equivalent of what I just described is this:
>
> I 1 <no description> [multipart/mixed]
> I 2 |-><no description> [text/plain]
> A 3 `-><no description> [image/jpeg]
>
> Entity #3 is the attachment. It is attached to Entity #2. Entity #1 is
> the staple: it exists only for the purpose of attaching #3 to #2.
Yeah, I see what you mean.
But you've skipped a step: the message. If you consider the
implementation, starting with RFC822 (and considering RFC821), you
have a message. The message doesn't have a body. Your entity #1 is
attached to the message.
That entities #2 and #3 are contained in entity #1 doesn't change the
fact that they are, though indirectly, attached to the message. That
entity #3 could be considered as attached to entity #2 doesn't change
the fact that they are (indirectly) attached to the message, either.
The fact that all entities are attached to the message makes all of
them attachments to the message, regardless of their purpose,
regardless of how they might be attached to each other and regardless
of how they are attached to the message.
Thus you cannot deny that you have a message (without a body and) with
three attachments. *You cannot send attachments without a message.*
> I understand, having read enough philosophy, that you can argue ad
> infinitum about the "truth" that the letter is just as much the
> attachment to the photograph as the photograph is an attachment to the
> letter, but that's a really pointless argument.
ok :)
Then we don't need to argue whether a message is still a message or
not when it doesn't have a body. RFC822 gives us the basic definition
of what a message is. That still seems to be in use. Other RFCs define
attachments --- I'll admit that I didn't read those because I didn't
need to yet and because there are so many and because it's hard to
tell which ones are current and which ones are superseded by others
...