Re: OT: HTML mail and multi-part mime [ not Re: list syntax ]
Re: OT: HTML mail and multi-part mime [ not Re: list syntax ]
- Subject: Re: OT: HTML mail and multi-part mime [ not Re: list syntax ]
- From: Paul Berkowitz <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 17:01:41 -0800
- Thread-topic: OT: HTML mail and multi-part mime [ not Re: list syntax ]
On 2/26/06 4:23 PM, "Malcolm Fitzgerald" <email@hidden> wrote:
> There's an increasing number of HTML posts on this list. It's not
> always productive. If page layout and font styling are such an
> important aspect of the message that you must send HTML formatted mail
> be aware that you'll lose some of your audience.
>
>
> As an example, when Jeremy wrote to the list this is what appearing in
> my mail window:
>
>
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>
>
> When an empty message arrives I presume it was sent by accident. He
> sent three messages - all looked empty. Only after Mr Tea responded did
> I bother to ask why he could get something where I couldn't. A quick
> squiz at the raw source shows that the multi-part mail headers of
> Jeremy's messages are badly formed. Did everyone else get a badly
> formed multi-part mime message from Jeremy, who is using Apple Mail
> (2.746.2) or is my mail client, Apple Mail (2.623), doing something
> funky?
>
>
> Malcolm
Jeremy's post appeared fine in Entourage 2004 11.2.1. All the HTML was OK.
The source for the text/html part included stuff like this:
<BODY style=3D"word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; =
-khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">I need to use multiple =
qualifiers...and here's the basic syntax:
I.e. there's lots of khtml coding in there, but Entourage gets it OK. The
header definitions for the multipart parts are:
--===============1006486651==
Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=sha1;
boundary=Apple-Mail-2--640205798;
protocol="application/pkcs7-signature"
--Apple-Mail-2--640205798
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=Apple-Mail-1--640206479
--Apple-Mail-1--640206479
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=US-ASCII;
delsp=yes;
format=flowed
So the multipart/alternative (which I'm quite sure all varieties of Apple
Mail 1 and 2 understand) are enclosed within an outer multipart/signed
wrapper. That's because Jeremy also sent his message digitally signed. But
the list server doesn't like digital sigs, and sees them as those smime.p7s
attachments which people have been objecting to. Entourage 2004 can
generally read digital signatures just fine, but I too see instead a
(useless) smime.p7s attachment, and no banner claiming "This message was
sent with a digital signature".
It's possible that Jeremy's Apple Mail is sending them in some unorthodox
way, but I'm pretty sure that it's rather that the mailing list server is
altering the structure of the source somehow without actually removing them
- that's why we see them as attachments. (Normally, only email clients which
don't understand digital sigs see them as attachments.)
And I guess that your earlier version of Apple Mail 2 is confused by
whatever the server did - it's probably looking for the signature. The
headers for the sig part is reading:
--Apple-Mail-2--640205798
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Type: application/pkcs7-signature;
name=smime.p7s
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename=smime.p7s
When I send out messages with digital sigs, the sig part headers look like
this:
--B_3223756131_57284590
Content-type: application/pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s"
Content-transfer-encoding: base64
Content-disposition: attachment;
filename = "smime.p7s"
That seems to be the same format: the lack of quotation marks around the
"smime.p7s" in the Content-Type header doesn't seem to bother Entourage. I
wonder if it's the lack of whitespace in the filename subheader which turns
it into an attachment? The Multipart header definitions when I send from
Entourage look like this:
Content-type: multipart/signed;
protocol="application/pkcs7-signature";
micalg=sha1;
boundary="B_3223756131_57284590"
which again look close enough, _except that in Jeremy's message the first
line is all run on much longer than the usual 80-character limit, rather
than breaking into separate lines preceded by whitespace:
Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=sha1;
boundary=Apple-Mail-2--640205798;
protocol="application/pkcs7-signature"
(In the source, what looks like two lines here in plaintext was actually one
line, which I think is an improper length.) It may be that your version of
Mail does not know how to correct for that where Entourage 2004 does?
By the way, digital signing is actually a Good Thing. But it will be a while
before all email clients know how to handle it. In the meantime, it's
probably a good idea to turn it off when sending to mailing lists.
--
Paul Berkowitz
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