[Mailman-Developers] Headers and footers for MIME messages

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "AM" == Andrew McNamara <andrewm@connect.com.au> writes:

    AM> You'll soon end up with a complex language for specifying
    AM> things like "accept binary attachments only if preceeded by a
    AM> text/plain", etc.. 8-)

Ug.  It's probably inevitable, but I really don't want Mailman to
become a hypergeneralized MIME slicer-n-dicer.

    AM> BTW, I think there's a special mime type for headers and
    AM> footers - text/plain isn't the right one. Can't remember off
    AM> the top of my head.

I'm not aware of it, so I'd appreciate pointers.  Maybe you're
thinking of multipart/digest or message/* types?   Neither is exactly
appropriate in this context.

    AM> The safest rules would be:

    AM> - if it's not a mime message, do the old thing.

Agreed.
    
    AM> - if it's
    AM> mime, and it's not already a multipart/mixed, create a
    AM> text/multipart with header/original mime/footer.

I think you mean "create a multipart/mixed with 3 subparts, the
header, the original article, and the footer".
    
    AM>   - it it's
    AM> mime, and and multipart/mixed, simply insert and append the
    AM> header and footer parts.

Agreed.

My main objective is above all "to do no harm", so for now, I'm going
to adopt these rules:

    - if it's not MIME or it's text/plain, do the old thing

    - if it's multipart/mixed, add the header and footers as
      additional subparts

    - anything else, pass the message through unchanged

We can elaborate on that last one later if necessary.

-Barry