RFC 2046 make provision for a Content-ID header in the parts of a
multipart. RFC 2111 make provision for a <cid: ... > URL, which is
apparently intended to allow one part of a multipart to include a
reference to another part.
So my question is: What systems, if any, currently support it, and exactly
how is it intended to be used?
To give an example of what I would like to do.
Contruct a multipart document (either multipart/mixed or
multipart/digest). The first (introductory) part of it contains
introductory material, including a Table Of Contents referring to the
remaining parts (which themselves might be message/rfc822, or text/plain,
or whatever else, each with its own Content-ID header).
The Table of Contents would include <cid: ... > URLs pointing to the
individual parts. So is there any software out there that would support
such a usage (e.g. by enabling you to click on the TOC entry so as to
cause the corresponding part to be displayed)? And what Content-Type
should the introductory part be? Text/plain, or something special?
A possible application for this kind of thing would be FAQs published in
newsgroups, but there are likely others.
A related question is the general usage of URLs in text/plain material.
Many reading agents try to detect these (usually pretty accurately, but
with occasional mistakes) and to highlight them. Is this usage formally
documented anywhere and, if not, should it be (perhape with supporting
parameters in the Content-Type header)?
--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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