The MAILCAP stuff is about making the third alternative possible.
Harald:
Some of us blinked. Can you post a reference/URL/summary of the current
state of the MAILCAP work?
I didn't take detailed meeting minutes, but what I have is:
This WG will focus on how to determine the capabilities of an
email recipient. Things such as public PGP or S/MIME keys,
supported content types (PowerPoint, PDF, WordPerfect), sound,
and other information. This information could be used to generate
a message that will be usable by the recipient. Many problems
were discussed briefly or offline, such as a recipient that uses
multiple access methods to their mailbox (pager, cellular phone,
Eudora, Netscape, etc.).
DNS was tossed around as a solution, but this is perhaps an over-abuse
of DNS.
Ned Freed was volunteered as the chair. He may have been trying to
protest, but I couldn't hear it over the many people saying his name
when a volunteer was being requested. :-)
-Dan Wing