Hey, On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 10:16:57PM -0500, Kyle Wheeler wrote: > I 1 <no description> [multipart/alternative] > I 2 |-><no description> [text/plain] > I 3 `-><no description> [text/html] [...] > But anyway, I don't consider this message to have ANY "attachments".
On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 10:51:44PM -0600, lee wrote: > Well, I would consider such a message as attachment only: No message > (i. e. no body), only three attachments. [...] > The fact that all entities are attached to the message makes all of > them attachments to the message, regardless of their purpose, > regardless of how they might be attached to each other and regardless > of how they are attached to the message. Lee, directly or indirectly, you're just playing language games. You're using the word "attach" to misleadingly describe the process by which a message has message entities added to it. While this is certainly a valid use of the word attach, you're then extrapolating that all entities must therefor be attachments. I guess in some general sense you are correct, but within the context of a MUA, an attachment has a very specific and well defined meaning, that is much more narrow than this. An attachment is a message entity that a user is likely to add or save to and from the file system, as separate to the main message. A good litmus test, although by no means perfect, would be if the entity has an explicit file name. In the example that Kyle gave, there are clearly no attachments, and I would not want to use a MUA that listed any. Best, -- Noah Slater, http://tumbolia.org/nslater
