Fairly often people fully intend to attach a file to an e-mail message
but then absentmindedly send it without doing. So it isn't particularly
surprising to receive a message which promises an attachment which isn't
there.
But I end up looking a fool if I reply pointing this out and requesting
the attachment if it turns out that the sender did actually include it;
it's just that he uses Apple Mail, which mis-labelled the attachment in
a way which hides it.
There's a message and a PDF file. So at the top level the mail should
have a content type of multipart/mixed, with a part for each of the
message and attachment. The message body was provided in both HTML and
plain text, so the message part should be multipart/alternative, with a
sub-part for each:
multipart/mixed:
* multipart/alternative:
» text/plain
» text/html
* application/pdf
Instead Apple Mail sent it as:
multipart/alternative:
* text/plain
* multipart/mixed:
» text/html
» application/pdf
The PDF is included as part of the HTML part! And since the two main
parts are labelled as being "alternative" representations of the same
content, if the recipient's mail reader is configured to prefer the
plain text version it doesn't find the PDF.
That isn't what "alternative" means.
Hate.
Smylers
