[Mailman-Users] Everything is an attachment

[Mark Sapiro]

Steve Campbell wrote:

>I have set up a list that is used for announcements only. There is a list of 
>members, but only a few can post. No digests, just immediate delivery. We 
>have a mixed bag of recipient MUAs here, and although OE receives the mail 
>normally, Outlook users receive email with the header only in the body of 
>the email, and the real body and footer as attachments.


This indicates the list header and footer are being added as separate
mime parts.


>I have searched the archives/FAQ for a solution and may have found an 
>answer, but am not sure. The FAQ 4.39 seems to indicate no real solution 
>other than changing MUA,


Or sending a single part, plain text only post in the character set of
the list language (us-ascii for English).


>but in
>
>http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/msg36757.html
>
>the solution was a blank line in the footer.


I think you're misinterpreting that post. I think she is saying her
problem was caused by a footer which consisted of only a blank line
and when she removed the footer completely, the problem went away.


>I have a header with a carriage 
>return that forms the blank line. Although this is easy to test to see if 
>this is really the problem, is there an easy way to create the separator 
>line to allow a blank line between the header and body other than asking 
>each poster to remember to put a blank line at the top of the body? I'm 
>still not sure why the footer is also an attachment.


The blank line is not the issue. If both a header and a footer are
added, either both will be added inline if possible, or both will be
added as separate MIME parts.


>I checked the sender's Outlook prefs and checked the "Send as plain text" in 
>his Contacts for this particular address, but that did not help. Can anyone 
>think of another place I may need to change something?


That should be part of the solution. The other part (at least in
Mailman 2.1.6 and above), is an attempt is made to convert everything
to unicode and then back to the character set of the list (us-ascii
for English). If this fails, an attempt is made to convert back to the
character set of the original post, and if that fails, the header and
footer are added as separate parts.

So the bottom line is the original post must be a single part, plain
text message, and in a declared character set that contains all the
characters used in the message, header and footer.

If you have set the poster's Outlook to send 'plain text only' to the
list, I suspect the problem may be "smart quotes" or other characters
in the message.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan