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Re: Attachment Semantics

1993-03-18 23:33:49
On Mar 18, 10:35pm, J. Laurens Troost wrote:
Subject: Attachment Semantics

It seems to me that the primary difference between inline and attached
dispositions is that the latter requires a positiveaction from the user to
display. This is how it works with mailtool, zmail, cc-mail, you name it.
It seems the common denominator.


Our mailer (which is currently in beta) supports "inline" attachments which
are presented to the user as icons. When activated, they are presented in
a separate top-level window. The user model we use is very similar to the OLE 
model for embedded objects. 

One thing that confuses me is whether the issue of where an object is anchored
the document (internal vs external) is separate from how the object is presented
(inline vs iconic vs hidden).  From what I have seen of some windows mailers
the term attachment is also used to refer to objects that are internally 
anchored
in the document, not just "attached" to it.  The distinction of more interest 
in something like microsoft mail client is whether you are sending an embedded
vs linked object.

What are other people thinking?

In another twist on annotations, our desktop (HP VUE), supports annotated files.
The user model is that you can invoke the "annotater" tool on any file and 
create as many annotation files as you wish. the annotations are only accessable
thru the annotator for modification.  Presence of annotations is indicated by
a change in the icon visuals for the file.  We had a prototype mailer that would
package up the annotations with the file and unpack them on the receiver's 
system.
We did not support transfer of annotations in the MPower mailer due to time 
constraints and lack of a clear MIME guideline.  

-Rens
rens(_at_)cs(_dot_)columbia(_dot_)edu
-- End of excerpt from J. Laurens Troost

Gabe

p.s. If you're wondering why I'm using Zmail instead of our mailer, then
the answer is I'm working at home and our mailer is closely coupled to 
the Mpower multimedia environment which they unfortunately don't let us
take home :-(


--
Gabe Beged-Dov                   e-mail: gabe(_at_)cv(_dot_)hp(_dot_)com
Hewlett-Packard
Open Systems Software Division, 
Corvallis, Oregon                phone: (503)750-4415



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