On Thu, 17 Jul 2003, Anne Wilson wrote:

> On Thursday 17 Jul 2003 7:30 pm, haywiremac wrote:
> > On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 11:16:11 -0400 (EDT)
> >
> > Bill Mullen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > ... which you really ought to do something about, Norman. I know
> > > that Outbreak Express is a brain-dead mail app, but surely it has
> > > some sort of way to turn off all the superfluous MIME nonsense and
> > > just send plain text? It must, I've seen it done - I'm sure of it.
> > > Ask around.
> >
> > It *is* sent in plain text. As others have pointed out, the mutipart
> > is because of the *footer* added by the list server.
> >
> > He is not sending html, rtf, or anything offensive to the list
> > requirements as far as I can see.
> 
> I copied his last message into the one folder where I allow trusted
> html.  It displayed as plain text

I probably shouldn't even be posting this, but I hate being misunderstood,
and generally put considerable effort into making myself as clear as I can
in my posts, none of which appears to be working for me in this instance.

My complaint in regards to Norman's OE posts are *not* a multipart issue
(as /everyone's/ posts here are multipart, but his posts are /not/ like
everyone else's), nor are they an HTML vs. plaintext issue (as he clearly
does not post in HTML, and has confirmed that fact himself). Nor am I 
alleging that he has violated any specific requirement of this list.

The issue is that OE is including in the *body* text of his messages some 
non-compliant MIME-related stuff - which I fully realize that OE will not 
let him see in the manner that others can see it. While I do not use OE, I 
have in the past, and ISTR that it has something to do with a setting in 
the preferences somewhere involving "quoted-printable" vs. "8-bit chars", 
or something along those lines. But it may be something else in there.

Viewing the raw message (headers and all) in any mail client, including
OE, should clarify exactly what I am referring to here, especially when 
the *body* of that message is contrasted with others here on the list. 

Upon further investigation, the problem appears to hinge on what OE does
*not* include in his posts, but all the various other standards-compliant
mailers *do* include. I refer to the lack of a "Content-Type" declaration
just after the first MIME boundary.

An excerpt from the raw view of his original post:

> Subject: [expert] perl(Authen::Smb::Smb)
> Content-type: multipart/mixed; 
boundary="----------=_1058395872-5877-492"
> Status: RO
> X-Status: A
> X-Keywords:                
> X-UID: 2921
> 
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format...
> 
> ------------=_1058395872-5877-492
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to upgrade to the latest squid-2.5 proxy server from cooker.
> However I get the following error

An similar excerpt from the post to which I am replying:

> Content-type: multipart/mixed; 
boundary="----------=_1058469064-5877-779"
> Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Status: RO
> X-Status: 
> X-Keywords:                 
> X-UID: 2974
> 
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format...
> 
> ------------=_1058469064-5877-779
> Content-Type: text/plain;
>   charset="iso-8859-1"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> Content-Disposition: inline
> 
> On Thursday 17 Jul 2003 7:30 pm, haywiremac wrote:
> > On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 11:16:11 -0400 (EDT)
> >
> > Bill Mullen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

One upshot of this incorrect encoding is that when I attempt to view his
messages using SquirrelMail rather than my usual Pine, the body text of
the entire message itself is not visible at *all*. All that's there is the
footer that is tacked on by Sympa. Nothing more.

While I readily concede that part of my motivation in bringing the issue
up at all is that I personally find that cruft distracting, I would not
have mentioned it but for the fact that it was clear to me that he had no
idea that this was occurring, and I for one like to be informed when my
software is exhibiting behaviors of which I am unaware, especially when
those behaviors vary to some degree from the "norm".

I am now quite sorry I ever brought the whole thing up. My apologies to
all concerned, and I will not raise the issue again in this forum.

-- 
Bill Mullen   [EMAIL PROTECTED]   MA, USA   RLU #270075   MDK 8.1 & 9.0
"In thebeginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people
very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." - Douglas Adams 

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