For the last several years, all I-Ds and RFCs publication announcements
have included message/external-body attachments to provide for automated
retrieval of the associated document. This causes very little
distraction for those of us who prefer to use http or mailto URIs, while
providing useful functionality for those using the external-body MIME
type.
However, this raises a question: does *anyone* use external-body in
association with I-D announcements? External-body was specified in RFC
1341 in 1992, 2.5 years before URIs were first specified in RFC 1738. I
suspect that the use of external-body has been almost wholly, if not
completely, supplanted. Of MUAs, I think that at least mh supports the
functionality, but is anyone using it?
I use it all the time. I use it mostly for I-D announcements, but I
also occasionally construct and send a message/external-body object myself.
Ned