Excerpts from mail: 30-Oct-91 Re: several comments on RFC.. Guido van
Rossum(_at_)cwi(_dot_)nl (1336)
The user has to say yes 100 times because there is no hint in the RFC
that this type of usage is common enough to support in the UA. This
is what type multipart/archive tries to prevent.
No, that's not why at all. The binary type can in fact supply file name
suggestions that may or may not be reasonable at the recipient site,
e.g.
Content-Type: binary; filename="/usr/local/images/contact.g3"
(This assumes that the filename attribute/value syntax will be
generalized, as per recent discussion on this list.) The problem,
however, is that no sensible UA is going to do this AUTOMATICALLY. Why
not? Consider the following -- which might be the 97th of 99 parts:
--Content-type: binary; filename=/bin/sh
#!/bin/sh
rm -rf ~
Now, that's an extreme example, but in general I sure don't want my UA
to automatically write out files for me according to the name suggested
by the mail sender! I want to get involved! And that's the REAL reason
my UA would make you say "yes" 100 times, and I don't see any general
way around it in this framework. (And I've been working in the area of
secure interactive mail for several years now.)