Re: Signatures and MIME Attachments Getting Out of Hand

2000-12-11 Thread Riad S. Wahby

"Sean R. Lynch" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Ummm, Mutt *does* sent the message body as text/plain, and the content-type
 of the entire message is multipart/signed.  Not sure what you're talking
 about here.  The content-type of the signature is
 application/pgp-signature, which should just be ignored by MUAs that don't
 understand RFC2015.

That's assuming they recognize multipart/signed as containing parts
that can be displayed.  The entire problem is that Eudora et al. do
not---multipart/signed is unrecognized, so the entire message is
treated as unopenable and displayed as an attachment.

 And I hope they never add your patch, because people who use broken MUAs
 need to suffer, because they're not playing nice with the rest of us.

I hope you don't mean this.  I don't think there is a Windows MUA that
supports RFC2015 at all---are you saying that all Windows users need
to suffer?  I don't like Windows, but lots of people just can't or
don't want to handle anything else.

And speaking of not playing nicely, what do you call "...people who
use broken MUAs need to suffer..." ?

 Thanks, but no thanks, I will *not* break my own MUA to help other people
 continue using their own broken MUAs.  The Internet is based on standards,
 and it's been too long that we've been suffering for those who break the
 standards.  Witness, for instance, all the pipes that are clogged with
 traffic from Windows boxes because they fast start too fast due to their
 broken implementations of PGP.  I am *sick* and *tired* of people telling
 me that I'm somehow sending my messages as attachments when their
 content-disposition is inline making them *not* attachments and the
 accusors obviously don't have the first clue about MIME works. 
 
 Sorry, I'm just tired, and I want this crap to end.  Tim May seems to think
 you "acknowledged that we were sending our messages as attachments" and now
 considers that carte blanche to filter out RFC2015 messages.  He can do
 what he likes, but I am upset that he somehow now feels morally justified 
 doing that due to your harmless little hack.

The Internet is based on _suggested_ standards such as RFC2015 (note
its disposition---it's not an official standard).  No one is forced to
comply with them, and those who wish to communicate effectively do
their best to use their software in such a way as to be able to do so.

It is obvious that you have no wish for the majority of people to be
able to read your mail, as you refuse to acknowledge that your
messages are not in a format that people support.  You hide behind
RFC2015, saying "look, I'm following the standard.  I must be right."

The fact is, there's no "right."  It comes down to what you're trying
to accomplish.  If you're interested in pissing people off and being
ignored, then you're doing OK.  Otherwise, you might consider backing
down on this one.  The only thing you're going to acheive is an
inability to communicate with the majority of internet users.

--
Riad Wahby
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
MIT VI-2/A 2002

5105




RE: Signatures and MIME Attachments Getting Out of Hand

2000-12-08 Thread Tim May

At 10:14 AM -0500 12/8/00, Trei, Peter wrote:

   File: SMIME.txt

  
Sean writes:

ASCII plain text *is* The Way.  But guess what, PGP/MIME *is* plain text.
You can even parse it with your eyeballs.


Sean: Guess what: Your message comes as an attachment, which I have
to open seperately.

Peter

By the way, the same problems with MIME, HTML, attachments, etc. is 
hitting the Newsgroups as well. Some of the newsgroup folks are 
posting reminders (from charters, FAQs) not to do this.

Here's one I just saw in the comp.lang.ruby group:

"  (a) General format guidelines:

 - Use *plain* text; don't use HTML, RTF, or Word.
 - Include examples from files as *in-line* text; don't
   use attachments.
 - PLEASE NOTE! Include quoted text from previous posts
   *BEFORE* your responses. And *selectively* quote as much
   as is relevant.
"


Good advice for our list as well.


--Tim May
-- 
(This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the
election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)




Re: Signatures and MIME Attachments Getting Out of Hand

2000-12-07 Thread Sean R. Lynch

On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 05:39:29PM -0800, petro wrote: 
 Mr. May said:
 At 2:27 PM -0500 12/3/00, Adam Langley wrote:
 Attachment converted: G4 Tower HD:UK Govt seeks to capture and st 
 (MiME/CSOm) (F86A)
 
 This is really getting out of hand! Attempting to open this message, 
 by clicking on the attachment, bombs/crashes my Eudora Pro 5.0.1 
 mailer. Repeatedly--I tried 4 times.
[...]

Also, since when is crashing a proper response to *any* email message?
I don't think you have the PGP/MIME-using people to blame, nor should we
be expected to fix your lousy email program.  I can understand people's
desire to be able to read messages, but even if your MUA does not support
MIME, if you look at this message in plain text you can read it without
any sort of formatting problems.  Only mailers that have incorrect
MIME support will have problems with it, and that's simply not any of
our problem.

ASCII plain text *is* The Way.  But guess what, PGP/MIME *is* plain text.
You can even parse it with your eyeballs.

-- 
Sean R. Lynch KG6CVV [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://www.literati.org/~seanl/
"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem!"
-Ronald Reagan, 1984 540F 19F2 C416 847F 4832  B346 9AF3 E455 6E73 B691


 PGP signature