[email protected] (Steve Blinkhorn) writes: > Can a mailcap entry make an attachment with these headers: > > Content-Type: application/octet-stream > Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 > Content-Description: Microsoft OOXML > Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="acctkey.xlsx" > > be read with scalc? More generally, is there a way of parsing the > Content-Description header along with the Content-Type to cope with > application/octet-stream attachyments? I get a lot of spreadsheet > attachments, some of which start up scalc and some don't and have to > be manually saved and opened outside the mail reader.
My impression is that it's common but technically buggy of the sender to use octet-stream instead of the actual content type it is highly normal for MUAs to look at the filename and intuit a replacement content-type and use that I am unaware of the use of the content-description field for automated processing by MUAs. Just looking at ~/.mailcap, it's about content-types, so presumably the extension->content-type mapping is not part of mailcap You didn't mention which ancient mailreader you are using, but the solution for you probably lies in MUA-specific configuration, or perhaps a few lines of code. Either that or you can get everyone you know to send you .ods instead with the right mime-type :-)
