[Mailman-Users] [Fwd: archive emails are garbled]

[Justin Zygmont]

Dragon wrote:
> Justin Zygmont sent the message below at 15:28 9/19/2006:
> 
>> ok, thanks.  Here is a paste of the message sources.  These both don't
>> show up as HTML in thunderbird for some reason, I guess mailman may not
>> be the cause?  Messages below were each shortened to save size.
>>
>>
>> Emailed directly to me:
>>
>>  From - Tue Sep 19 14:51:50 2006
>> X-Account-Key: account2
>> X-UIDL: 1154544464.3663
>> X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
>> X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
>> Return-Path: <jbill at cityfone.net>
>> X-Original-To: justin at cityfone.net
>> Delivered-To: justin at cityfone.net
>> Received: from citybillingcityfone.net (citybilling.cityfone.local
>> [192.168.43.30])
>>         by citysupport.cityfone.local (Postfix) with ESMTP id A8CA12543C1
>>         for <justin at cityfone.net>; Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:50:05 -0700 (PDT)
>> Received: from citybilling.cityfone.local (localhost [127.0.0.1])
>>         by citybillingcityfone.net (8.13.4+Sun/8.13.3) with ESMTP id 
>> k8JLovlg007676
>>         for <justin at cityfone.net>; Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:50:57 -0700 (PDT)
>> Received: (from jan at localhost)
>>         by citybilling.cityfone.local (8.13.4+Sun/8.13.3/Submit) id 
>> k8JLovKo007675
>>         for justin at cityfone.net; Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:50:57 -0700 (PDT)
>> Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:50:57 -0700 (PDT)
>> From: jbill at cityfone.net
>> Message-Id: <200609192150.k8JLovKo007675 at citybilling.cityfone.local>
>> X-Authentication-Warning: citybilling.cityfone.local: jan set sender to
>> jbill at cityfone.net using -r
>> To: justin at cityfone.net
>> Subject: test
>> X-IMAPbase: 1154544464 3663
>> Status: O
>> X-UID: 3663
>> Content-Length: 3344
>> X-Keywords:
> 
> ---------------- End original message. ---------------------
> 
> The most immediate problem I see is that these messages are missing any 
> sort of MIME headers (as defined in RFC2045). Without those headers, 
> there is no definitive way for the mail client to know what the content 
> is. Some MUAs will then default to plain-text and not try to even guess 
> what the content type is. Some (like Eudora which I use) may detect the 
> HTML structure of the message body and render it.
> 
> I am curious how you are creating these messages, are you composing them 
> in an MUA in HTML format or are you cutting and pasting an HTML document 
> from another editor into the message body? If the latter, you are not 
> going to get the correct headers to identify the message content to a 
> MIME compliant MUA. If the former, your MUA should be inserting these 
> headers correctly.
> 
> 
> As stated in section 1 of RFC2046:
> 
> 
>    The first document in this set, 
> <http://www.faqs.org/rfcs//rfcs/rfc2045.html>RFC 2045, defines a number 
> of header
>    fields, including Content-Type. The Content-Type field is used to
>    specify the nature of the data in the body of a MIME entity, by
>    giving media type and subtype identifiers, and by providing auxiliary
>    information that may be required for certain media types.  After the
>    type and subtype names, the remainder of the header field is simply a
>    set of parameters, specified in an attribute/value notation.  The
>    ordering of parameters is not significant.

Thanks, I guess its just a matter of inserting the content-type header 
into the message then.  I created these messages with a script that 
saved its output to a file, then used:
mailx -s "subject" me at mydomain.com <filename.html
If only there is a command line mailer that will allow me to add the 
mime type header to the email, then that would allow the message to 
display correctly in both my email client, and the list archives.
Anyone know a way to do this?