ietf-822
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Re: [OT] (or not?) Did anyone tell Microsoft yet?

2002-04-24 11:02:16

- From a bug report against _KMail_:

Compare two attachment header with smae name and look on difference!
Outlook Express:
Content-Type: application/msword;
      name="=?koi8-r?B?Q8/XxdQuZG9j?="
 
Should one work around this?

since there's no name parameter defined for application/msword, 
strictly speaking, you should probably ignore it.

OTOH if you implement a heuristic that says that in the absence of
a content-disposition filename parameter, you'll look for a name 
paramter in the content-type field, then you might also consider
implementing a heuristic that says that if the name paramter is 
rfc 2047 encoded then you will attempt to decode it.  

in any case, you should only treat the filename as a suggestion - 
a default value that the user needs to explicitly confirm.  you
should never use it without asking the user first - and it's only
"safe" to use these heuristics if you follow this rule.

similarly, I recommend against implementing automatic rfc 2047 
decoding for parameters in general -  partly because there's a small
chance that you'll misinterpret a parameter that way, partly because
it conflicts with standard usage, and partly because 2047 is a poor 
mechanism for this purpose (which is why the standard doesn't use it).

Keith