> On 06/20/2014 10:23 AM, Cameron Simpson wrote: > > On 20Jun2014 09:32, Martin Vegter <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Could anybody please help with the second part of my question, i.e. why >> message body is displayed as if it were attachment? > > To a degree I think that's just how it's done, but there are structural and > presentation reasons for it. > > A message _without_ an attachment has the content-type in the message header > as > either a "text/..." type (plain or html most commonly) or a > "multipart/alternative". All of these are a single top level piece of > content; > the message. In the former case ("text/...") mutt just takes the content and > formats it for display. In the latter case, mutt looks at the subparts of the > "multipart/mixed" top level container and picks one and formats it for > display. > There are no markers because there is only one part to consider. >
But all that said, should not a plain message (i.e. text body without attachments) be treated by mutt as such? I am asking because when sending a message from Mutt, after I have composed the message in my editor and am now in the "compose" menu, I see the header (recepient, subject, ...) and below I see my message body as attachment. Is this a good conceptual approach, to treat everything as attachment? I find this quite illogical and unintuitive. AFAIU, this is specific to mutt, and does not have anything to do with any email standard. When I send an email via telnet, I simply type my message after DATA, and terminate with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>. No attachment is ever involved. Cheers, Martin
