I am sorry if this question has been asked before. I have disengaged myself
on ietf-822 discussion for awhile.
I tried to implement the Message/External-Body in my MUA, but I found
out that the RFC 1341 was not clear in terms of the usage of the "Mode" option
in "ftp" and "anon-ftp."
The problem is: the "Mode" is optional and there is no default value. It is
not clear to me if the "Mode" option translates into "binary" or "ascii"
command in ftp.
If the "Mode" does not translate into "binary" or "ascii", does the MUA
rely on the external resource (e.g. mailcap) to determine the transfer
type? Among Unix systems, the "binary" transfer type works fine to ASCII and
binary data, but DOS to Unix ftp doesn't.
Maybe RFC 1341 should clarify a little bit on this "Mode" option. It should
be a simple fix, I hope.
-Vincent