At 3:00 AM -0700 8/16/96, Ned Freed wrote:
entirely misplaced. MIME exceeded its design goals and became a general data
structuring format before the first set of MIME RFCs were even out. There are
indeed it did and I agree that MUAs aren't the only place to look
for satisfaction of the implementation/use. But the use needs to be real.
The fact that RFC and I-D announcements use /alternative is a good start,
for believing the contruct is a good one. But what receiving software is
there that uses this contruct meaningfully? Is it used elsewhere? (For
reference, I really DO want the answer to be yes. I think is is a
marvelous construct.)
I already pointed out that there are plenty of implementations of
multipart/alternative on the receiving side. If you want to look at two of the
more popular ones, consider Metamail and Pine, both of which implement it and
both of which don't simply display the final part, even though this would meet
the requirements of the MIME specification for alternative support.
this step doesn't require implementation into production systems;
demonstration is fine. on the other hand, MIME ain't new and a lack of
implementation in production systems by now is not a good sign. no?
There is no such lack now and there never has been. As I said before, there
were interoperating implementations of alternative before RFC1341 came out.
Ned