On 9/12/04 5:40 am, "Jim Robertson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> By the way, what's a "text MIME part"?
MIME message are split into parts that can be treated in different ways.
Attachments, for example, can be disposed of 'inline' (displayed with the
message), 'embedded' (referred to within the HTML code of another part of
the message, to be displayed within the message at that point) or simply
treated as separate items, to be dealt with outside of the message itself.
Now, HTML messages should normally be identified something like this:
Content-type: text/html;
charset="US-ASCII"
Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable
Which determines how it is treated by the receiving client.
However, what if the receiving client doesn't understand HTML? (there are
still some of these out there, getting rarer, but still around) or if the
recipient hates HTML mail and has a preference set in his mail client to
display plain text only (entourage can't do this, but other clients can)?
Well, well behaved mail clients send a plain text version of the same mail
along with the HTML. This plain text version will be described something
like this:
Content-type: text/plain;
charset="US-ASCII"
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
Note that is 'text/plain' instead of 'text/html'.
These two bits are MIME 'parts'. They are wrapped together in a parent part
which identifies itself something like this:
Content-type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="B_3180793203_180026"
Which declares "this part consists of two or more sub parts. These parts are
alternative ways to view the message. Choose which one you like."
This explanation is simplified considerably. For all the gory details you
need to read RFC2045 thru RFC2049, available from
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc.html>
--
Barry Wainwright
Microsoft MVP (see http://mvp.support.microsoft.com for details)
Seen the All-New Entourage Help Pages? - Check them out:
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
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