Hi there,
I've been 'lurking on this list for quite a while now, but this topic
interests me. I've been trying to get my Mail*Hub to accept all
kinds of differently formatted Content-Disposition messages as
per the below.
I'm not an expert, but reading the rfc's they mention that a filename
parameter is optional for inline and up to the implementation of the
client what it should do with it.
Netscape seems to generate inline for all text/plain messages and
shows this both as inline and optionally as a file to it's users. Quite
handy for NS users but quite painful for other users who have mail
clients having other implementations.
Exchange is a wildcard, all kinds of differently formatted messages
originate from there all depending on versions and configuration.
Regarding HP's OpenMail it seems to quite often use the Subject
as the name and filename parameter on single message body parts.
My conclusion was that the rfc's provided no means for a transparent
method of indicating if it was a inline body part or an attachment, too
many possibilities for different implementations. I wrote both Netscape
and HP but only got the reply from HP that this was rfc compliant, which
I cannot object to.
Now, if the rfc's are really more specific than this I'd like some pointers
in that regards, or maybe this is being worked on in further rfc's?
Hope this is within the scope of this list,
Rgds,
-GSH
Harald(_at_)Alvestrand(_dot_)no on 13.04.1999 22:27:00
To: ietf-822(_at_)imc(_dot_)org@lnisgatt
cc: (bcc: Guðbjörn Hreinsson/Skima)
Subject: Re: Misuse of Content-Disposition (Was: Content-Disposition
ancillary)
Just for fun, I did some digging for "content-disposition: inline" in
my April archives.
What I found:
Mozilla 4.51 uses it for forwarded messages - without filename.
Novell Groupwise 5.5 uses them on a SINGLE-part message
message - without filename.
Lotus SMTP MTA (Internal build v4.6.2, and others) uses them on a
single-part message without filename.
A more interesting example is what a Lotus SMTP MTA (probably the same build)
did to a multipart message. Content-disposition inline for multiparts?
Content-type: multipart/mixed;
Boundary="0__=GT4D6kwm4SS7ntBH6vf0MmbyUG4Vjt0gsOTahntmbzlBMm7VJU8CPx8V"
Content-Disposition: inline
Sender: owner-ipp(_at_)pwg(_dot_)org
--0__=GT4D6kwm4SS7ntBH6vf0MmbyUG4Vjt0gsOTahntmbzlBMm7VJU8CPx8V
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Mozilla 4.08 is able to generate the following for an attached GIF:
Content-Disposition: inline; filename="26879.gif"
(in context it made SENSE to have the attachment viewed inline; it's small)
Mulberry (Mac) 1.4.2.1 uses it (without filename) on single-part messages.
Mozilla 4.51 also generated an attachment that *I* wouldn't have had
inline with the following:
Content-Disposition: inline;
filename="ntpserver.patch"
Some version of HP OpenMail generated the following quite bizarre
combination for a multipart:
Part 1:
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="1.txt"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="1.txt"
Part 2:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Disposition: inline; filename="Re:"
I don't know the intent of the sender.
Some version of Mail*Hub (TurboSendmail?) X.400->SMTP gateway added
a "Content-disposition: inline" (no filename) to its single body part.
Finally, just for laughs, this came out of some spammer's engine:
--------------51A269FA31DF
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1; name="2dollars.htm"
Content -Transfer - Encoding: quoted -printable
Content-Disposition: inline; filename="2dollars.htm"
Content-Base: "file:///C|/My%20Documents/Project/2dollars.htm"
==============================================================
Conclusions?????????????????????????
- A lot of stuff will attach "Content-disposition: inline" to single-part
messages under some, still unknown, conditions.
- Some stuff will inline all body parts, and seems to be consistent in doing
so; it's not clear that this represents the user's intent, or is being
honored by the recipients' MUA.
- One fairly rare mailer (sorry, HP) generates "text of message" body parts
that contain a filename in its "content-disposition: inline" header.
Very unscientific sample, of course; I found 87 messages with
"content-disposition: inline" in my April archive (out of 2.529), and 3 of
them had a filename attached to them.
All the usual caveats apply; this is what msgs looked like when they came
to me.
And I didn't check very hard for counterexamples, either.
Harald A
--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, Maxware, Norway
Harald(_dot_)Alvestrand(_at_)maxware(_dot_)no