<< I suggest that the "main" body part should simply be the first one. This
<< makes life far easier for users without MIME UA's and make my life a lot
<< easier in my MIME-mostly-aware MUA.
< If we are to support Main/attachment structure, then its seems obvious
< that tagging a part as "main" is a usefully minimal strategy.
<
< To allow UA's the flexibility to have an arbitrary ordering of body parts
< seems desirable, but Steve Dorner says it is an awkward luxery.
<
< Both views have obvious merit, so I say we need some counter examples of
< how that flexibility would be usefull.
The last time this topic came up seriously (either here or in
comp.mail.mime), there were several examples of differing systems which make
different assumptions about attachments. The two major paradigms were
a letter or cover sheet followed by the attachments
a series of attachments clipped on top of a letter
To be able to handle both of these paradigms, it is clear that the "main"
portion must be able to be labelled as such.
Tony Hansen
hansen(_at_)pegasus(_dot_)att(_dot_)com,
tony(_at_)attmail(_dot_)com
att!pegasus!hansen, attmail!tony