Excerpts from direct: 2-Mar-93 RE: file attachments in MIME Ned
Freed(_at_)sigurd(_dot_)innosof (809*)
This significantly complicates the very common
situation where a message has no body at all other than a single file
attachment. (The intent of the message is then usually conveyed on the
Subject:
line.)
Sort of an empty primary message. Of course, that might be thought of
as not being an attachment, since it is not attached to any other
message, but rather simply a message of type ``application/foo''. But I
suppose in this case we want to distinguish between the cases where the
application is to be started and the content of the message displayed,
and where mail is simply being used as a transport mechanism for the
application data. Putting it in an envelope (in this case, an enclosing
message of ``multipart/attachments'' with a null primary part, or
perhaps a primary part that echos the Subject line) still seems to be
the cleanest design for this.
Bill