[Python-Dev] Completing the email6 API changes.

[R. David Murray]

On Tue, 03 Sep 2013 10:01:42 -0400, "R. David Murray" <rdmurray at bitdance.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Sep 2013 10:56:36 +0900, "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
> > R. David Murray writes:
> >  > I can understand the structure Glen found in Applemail:
> >  > a series of text/plain parts interspersed with image/jpg, with all parts
> >  > after the first being marked 'Contentent-Disposition: inline'.  Any MUA
> >  > that can display text and images *ought* to handle that correctly and
> >  > produce the expected result.  But that isn't what your structure above
> >  > would produce.  If you did:
> >  > 
> >  >     multipart/related
> >  >         multipart/alternative
> >  >             text/html
> >  >             text/plain
> >  >         image/png
> >  >         text/plain
> >  >         image/png
> >  >         text/plain
> >  > 
> >  > and only referred to the png parts in the text/html part and marked all
> >  > the parts as 'inline' (even though that is irrelevant in the text/html
> >  > related case), an MUA that *knew* about this technique *could* display it
> >  > "correctly", but an MUA that is just following the standards most
> >  > likely won't.
> > 
> > OK, I see that now.  It requires non-MIME information about the
> > treatment of the root entity by the implementation.  On the other
> > hand, it shouldn't *hurt*.  RFC 2387 explicitly specifies that at
> > least some parts of a contained multipart/related part should be able
> > to refer to entities related via the containing multipart/related.
> > Since it does not mention *any* restrictions on contained root
> > entities, I take it that it implicitly specifies that any contained
> > multipart may make such references.  But I suspect it's not
> > implemented by most MUAs.  I'll have to test.
> 
> OK, I see what you are driving at now.  Whether or not it works is
> dependent on whether or not typical MUAs handle a multipart/related with
> a text/plain root part by treating it as if it were a multipart/mixed

I meant "a text/plain root part *inside* a multipart/alternative", which
is what you said, I just didn't understand it at first :)  Although I
wonder how many GUI MUAs do the fallback to multipart/mixed with just a
normal text/plain root part, too.  I would expect a text-only MUA would,
since it has no other way to display a multipart/related...but a
graphical MUA might just assume that there will always be an html part
in a multipart/related.

> with inline or attachment sub-parts.  So yes, whether or not we should
> support and/or document this technique very much depends on whether or
> not typical MUAs do so.  I will, needless to say, be very interested in
> the results of your research :)
> 
> --David
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