Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[David Wright]

On Tue 14 Apr 2020 at 20:50:01 (+), Russell L. Harris wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 03:19:57PM -0500, David Wright wrote:
> > Have you examined the timestamps in the email header of such emails in
> > order to see where the holdup is occurring. It may or may not be in
> > the last hop.
> 
> You embarrass me, David!  It did not occur to me that the header would
> contain time stamps, so I did not examine them.  The messages already
> are deleted.

No problem; you could well get other opportunities to check as and when
these sporadic emails arrive, even if you change the means by which you
receive them from their last hop.

Cheers,
David.

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Russell L. Harris]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 03:19:57PM -0500, David Wright wrote:

Have you examined the timestamps in the email header of such emails in
order to see where the holdup is occurring. It may or may not be in
the last hop.


You embarrass me, David!  It did not occur to me that the header would
contain time stamps, so I did not examine them.  The messages already
are deleted.

RLH

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[David Wright]

On Tue 14 Apr 2020 at 07:25:28 (+), Russell L. Harris wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 09:51:38AM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > > I suppose I need to reduce the limit of the number of messages
> > > downloaded in a sesson, so as to enable more frequent checks for
> > > incoming messages.
> > 
> > What benefit would this bring?
> 
> Perhaps once a month or once every other month, I am on the telephone
> with a party who is sending me an email, typically with an attachment.
> And typically I have been "on hold" on the phone for a half hour to
> reach that individual.  So the other guy says, "I just sent the
> message; tell me when you receive it."  And I must reply, "My system
> checks for new messages only every three minutes."
> 
> And then three minutes pass as we discuss the weather, and still the
> message has not arrived.  So the other guy sends the message again,
> and we wait another three minutes, and sometimes longer.  For some
> reason, messages from one of the larger domain registration outfits
> routinely take twelve hours to reach me; that was the case two or
> three times within the past few months.
> 
> So in such instances, it would be nice to check for new mail once a
> minute.  Even better would be a check made immediately upon demand; I
> know how to do that, and I have done it before.  But most of the time,
> a check every half hour would be adequate.

Have you examined the timestamps in the email header of such emails in
order to see where the holdup is occurring. It may or may not be in
the last hop.

Cheers,
David.

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 apr 20, 07:25:28, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 09:51:38AM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > > I suppose I need to reduce the limit of the number of messages
> > > downloaded in a sesson, so as to enable more frequent checks for
> > > incoming messages.
> > 
> > What benefit would this bring?
> 
> Perhaps once a month or once every other month, I am on the telephone
> with a party who is sending me an email, typically with an attachment.
> And typically I have been "on hold" on the phone for a half hour to
> reach that individual.  So the other guy says, "I just sent the
> message; tell me when you receive it."  And I must reply, "My system
> checks for new messages only every three minutes."
 
Ah, the classic (ab)use of e-mail as instant messaging and/or file 
transfer.

> And then three minutes pass as we discuss the weather, and still the
> message has not arrived.  So the other guy sends the message again,
> and we wait another three minutes, and sometimes longer.  For some
> reason, messages from one of the larger domain registration outfits
> routinely take twelve hours to reach me; that was the case two or
> three times within the past few months.

Increasing check frequency wouldn't help with this. It could be some 
anti-spam measure (greylisting). Maybe your provider allows some 
mechanism to whitelist a domain and/or e-mail address, likely via the 
web interface (if there is one).

> So in such instances, it would be nice to check for new mail once a
> minute.  Even better would be a check made immediately upon demand; I
> know how to do that, and I have done it before.  But most of the time,
> a check every half hour would be adequate.

For an instant-like experience with e-mail you need push, not pull (e.g. 
like the IMAP IDLE extension). You would have to replace getmail with 
something like offlineimap or interimap (not familiar with either, so 
can't tell if they would actually work for that and/or fit your needs).

If you want to explore this path I suggest you start a new thread and 
explain what such a system would need to achieve (e.g. full offline copy 
of all messages, sorting/filtering), *not how*, and if there are any 
objective or subjective constraints (e.g. e-mail provider that can't be 
changed, e-mail client you won't part with, etc.)

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Russell L. Harris]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 09:51:38AM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

I suppose I need to reduce the limit of the number of messages
downloaded in a sesson, so as to enable more frequent checks for
incoming messages.


What benefit would this bring?


Perhaps once a month or once every other month, I am on the telephone
with a party who is sending me an email, typically with an attachment.
And typically I have been "on hold" on the phone for a half hour to
reach that individual.  So the other guy says, "I just sent the
message; tell me when you receive it."  And I must reply, "My system
checks for new messages only every three minutes."

And then three minutes pass as we discuss the weather, and still the
message has not arrived.  So the other guy sends the message again,
and we wait another three minutes, and sometimes longer.  For some
reason, messages from one of the larger domain registration outfits
routinely take twelve hours to reach me; that was the case two or
three times within the past few months.

So in such instances, it would be nice to check for new mail once a
minute.  Even better would be a check made immediately upon demand; I
know how to do that, and I have done it before.  But most of the time,
a check every half hour would be adequate.

RLH

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 13 apr 20, 18:43:53, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 12:01:47PM -0500, Jason wrote:
> > 
> > As another option, both getmail and thunderbird can be configured to
> > leave messages on the server and then delete them a certain number of
> > days after retrieval. Using that feature in getmail, you could access
> > the same messages in thunderbird, and tell thunderbird to not delete
> > messages.
> 
> Thanks for jogging my memory.  It has been so long since I configured
> getmail that I forgot that getmail can serve unrelated accounts and
> deliver to multiple locations, each with its own structure (mbox or
> maildir).
> 
> I suppose I need to reduce the limit of the number of messages
> downloaded in a sesson, so as to enable more frequent checks for
> incoming messages.  

What benefit would this bring?

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Russell L. Harris]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 12:01:47PM -0500, Jason wrote:


As another option, both getmail and thunderbird can be configured to
leave messages on the server and then delete them a certain number of
days after retrieval. Using that feature in getmail, you could access
the same messages in thunderbird, and tell thunderbird to not delete
messages.


Thanks for jogging my memory.  It has been so long since I configured
getmail that I forgot that getmail can serve unrelated accounts and
deliver to multiple locations, each with its own structure (mbox or
maildir).

I suppose I need to reduce the limit of the number of messages
downloaded in a sesson, so as to enable more frequent checks for
incoming messages.  At present getmail runs every three minutes.
But I do not have a feel for the load imposed on a mail server by
frequent checks.  Would an ISP frown on a check every minute?



As for PDF attachments, I use getmail to deliver to maildrop, which
then runs a copy of the email through ripmime to automatically save
the attachments to a directory.


And I keep forgetting about maildrop, which I have used in the past.

RLH

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Jason]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 08:53:35AM +, Russell L. Harris composed:

> All things considered, I am thinking that the best solution is to set
> up a POP account on another domain and configure Thunderbird to fetch
> mail from that location.  Then all I need to do in mutt is to forward
> troublesome messages to that account.
> 

As another option, both getmail and thunderbird can be configured to 
leave messages on the server and then delete them a certain number of 
days after retrieval. Using that feature in getmail, you could access 
the same messages in thunderbird, and tell thunderbird to not delete 
messages.

As for PDF attachments, I use getmail to deliver to maildrop, which then 
runs a copy of the email through ripmime to automatically save the 
attachments to a directory.

-- 
Jason

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Richard Hector]

On 31/03/20 7:32 am, David Wright wrote:
> Richard Hector was unable to save the empty Romanian attachment, so
> I posted a non-empty version to see whether it was the emptiness or
> the name that was the problem. No reply.

Apologies; that (or at least the intent of it) slipped past me. I can
save that one.

Cheers,

Richard

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[The Wanderer]

On 2020-03-30 at 14:32, David Wright wrote:

> On Sat 28 Mar 2020 at 10:30:07 (+0200), Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> 
>> On Vi, 27 mar 20, 23:15:12, David Wright wrote:
>> 
>>> However, the actual problem that Russell introduced was how a 
>>> character set—any character set—should be encoded in the email
>>> header parameter's value. And the RFC answer is "not in Base64",
>>> which is for unstructured fields, as illustrated by the header of
>>> my previous post. Mutt, as expected, writes conformant values but
>>> can be instructed to decode particular non-conformant ones.
>> 
>> So any test involving mutt as source is irrelevant.
> 
> Well, I'm not sure who's testing what. AIUI Russell is happy to
> switch to Thunderbird for those attachments from the cattle raisers
> association. Richard Hector was unable to save the empty Romanian
> attachment, so I posted a non-empty version to see whether it was the
> emptiness or the name that was the problem. No reply.

FWIW, as another Thunderbird user, I likewise couldn't save the empty
attachment (it didn't give an error, when I was using "save as", but
the file never showed up in the filesystem), but saving the non-empty
one by the exact same method produced a file just fine.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[David Wright]

On Mon 30 Mar 2020 at 07:26:06 (-0400), Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 11:15:12PM -0500, David Wright wrote:
> > (BTW I'm not sure about Reco's use of \uc899. Does \u mean that
> > c899 is in utf-8, or should it be followed by a Unicode codepoint,
> > as in U+c899? If the latter, then \uc899 is way off my charts.)
> 
> It's a notation used in some programming tools/environments to denote
> a Unicode code point.
> 
> E.g. bash's printf and $'...' accept \u or \U to denote
> Unicode code points using either 4 or 8 hex digits.
> 
> $ printf '\u00f1\n'
> ñ

Of course! With well over a decade of using Unicode natively, I had
forgotten that people would want to do that. And refreshing bash's
prompt escape syntax last December (\D{}, \u etc) completely wiped
it from my mind.

So one has to be careful not to translate
Content-Disposition: attachment; 
filename*=utf-8''%C8%99urubelni%C8%9B%C4%83_empty%2Etxt
into Unicode codepoints like \uc899 because it's utf-8, not utf-32.

Cheers,
David.

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[David Wright]

On Sat 28 Mar 2020 at 10:30:07 (+0200), Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Vi, 27 mar 20, 23:15:12, David Wright wrote:
> > 
> > However, the actual problem that Russell introduced was how a
> > character set—any character set—should be encoded in the email header
> > parameter's value. And the RFC answer is "not in Base64", which is for
> > unstructured fields, as illustrated by the header of my previous post.
> > Mutt, as expected, writes conformant values but can be instructed to
> > decode particular non-conformant ones.
> 
> So any test involving mutt as source is irrelevant.

Well, I'm not sure who's testing what. AIUI Russell is happy to switch
to Thunderbird for those attachments from the cattle raisers association.
Richard Hector was unable to save the empty Romanian attachment, so
I posted a non-empty version to see whether it was the emptiness or
the name that was the problem. No reply.

> > > According to
> > > ,
> > > it originally used ISO 8859-2.
> > 
> > … aka Latin-2. Not being Romanian, I can't comment on the relative
> > popularity of that and Latin-10 (ISO 8859-16) or whether the latter
> > was still-born. And…
> > 
> > > Of course, it would probably use UTF-8
> > > on most modern systems.
> > 
> > Yes, that also seems more up-to-date and expressive, with support for
> > distinguishing obscure (to me) variants like cedilla vs comma below.
> 
> Right.
> 
> 
> Apparently Microsoft (and Adobe?) had to come up with the support for 
> Romanian by themselves, because the responsible Romanian entities didn't 
> bother at the time. Unfortunately they got it wrong (not blaming them, 
> just stating a fact).
> 
> The wrong characters are still in use now (even though correct support 
> was included in Windows 7 - for XP there was a language pack), also 
> because many font creators got confused and didn't implement support 
> correctly (missing characters, characters in wrong positions, etc).
> 
> This (and the fact that many Romanians don't even bother to use any
> diacritics at all) makes searching for exact strings... challenging.
> 

Cheers,
David.

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Greg Wooledge]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 11:15:12PM -0500, David Wright wrote:
> (BTW I'm not sure about Reco's use of \uc899. Does \u mean that
> c899 is in utf-8, or should it be followed by a Unicode codepoint,
> as in U+c899? If the latter, then \uc899 is way off my charts.)

It's a notation used in some programming tools/environments to denote
a Unicode code point.

E.g. bash's printf and $'...' accept \u or \U to denote
Unicode code points using either 4 or 8 hex digits.

$ printf '\u00f1\n'
ñ

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[tomas]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 02:37:22PM -, Curt wrote:

[...]

> Not at all; I'm an expatriate who's lost some of his Anglophonic
> reflexes after many years here in France. What's gone in one ear has
> pushed some stuff out the other.

That's why we often have two of them, after all ;-)

Cheers
-- t


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Curt]

On 2020-03-28,   wrote:
>
>
>> > This betrays a little your French background :-)

>> Yes, you're right, that's it.

> Lest it be interpreted the wrong way: I'll venture to describe
> my relation to France and its culture as a kind of love afair.

Not at all; I'm an expatriate who's lost some of his Anglophonic
reflexes after many years here in France. What's gone in one ear has
pushed some stuff out the other.

;-)

> I'm still trying to wrap my limited brains around that wonderful
> language: often, I fail miserably, but I still enjoy it.

Well, I've arrived at "Le Temps retrouvé" and plan next to read
something from Balzac (never read anything of his). Somebody suggested a
good entry point to me once some time ago, but I've forgotten what book
of his it was.

> Cheers
> -- t
>


-- 
"When we encounter computer output that looks like what we produce by thinking,
we are liable to credit the computer with thought... By that rule of inference,
there would have to be an orchestra somewhere inside your CD player and a farm
in your refrigerator."  --David Halpern

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[tomas]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 01:15:25PM +, Joe wrote:
> [...] despite being taught Spanish by a bearded Australian
> who looked a lot like Roger Whittaker

Sounds about right (note that I'm Spanish myself, although
I'd rather say Cosmopolitan or something ;-)

Cheers
-- t


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Joe]

On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 11:03:54 +0100
 wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 09:38:09AM -, Curt wrote:
> > On 2020-03-28,   wrote:  
> 
> [...]
> 
> > > This betrays a little your French background :-)  
> > 
> > Yes, you're right, that's it.  
> 
> Lest it be interpreted the wrong way: I'll venture to describe
> my relation to France and its culture as a kind of love afair.
> 
> I'm still trying to wrap my limited brains around that wonderful
> language: often, I fail miserably, but I still enjoy it.

About fifty years ago, I could actually sort of hack my way through
Spanish and French, at a present tense, 'plume de ma tante' level. I
studied French for five years and Spanish for two, and I swear I ended
up knowing more Spanish than French, despite being taught Spanish by a
bearded Australian who looked a lot like Roger Whittaker. I still
remember the odd few words...

-- 
Joe

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Joe]

On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 09:44:20 - (UTC)
Curt  wrote:

> On 2020-03-28, Joe  wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> Reco meant Roumanian (a Latin language). Or does everybody
> >> >> already know that?
> >> >> 
> >> >
> >> > Yes, Romanian or Rumanian is Latin, but here in the context
> >> > Latin is ambiguous. 
> >> >
> >> 
> >> My confusion stemmed from the fact I thought the correct word was
> >> "Roumanian," not Romanian, which I took for a typo, exposing my
> >> ignorance (which paradoxically seems to be increasing the more I
> >> know (because the more I know the more I realize I don't)).
> >>   
> >
> > Either spelling is used in Britain, and sometimes Rumanian.  
> 
> You've retained those more Norman Conquest style spellings over
> there, I think.
> 
> 

Mostly the 'our' stuff where you use 'or'.

We do (as do you) actually still have a bit of Danish (son and daughter,
from sen and dottir, nothing like the Latin forms).

-- 
Joe

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[tomas]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 09:38:09AM -, Curt wrote:
> On 2020-03-28,   wrote:

[...]

> > This betrays a little your French background :-)
> 
> Yes, you're right, that's it.

Lest it be interpreted the wrong way: I'll venture to describe
my relation to France and its culture as a kind of love afair.

I'm still trying to wrap my limited brains around that wonderful
language: often, I fail miserably, but I still enjoy it.

Cheers
-- t


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Curt]

On 2020-03-28, Joe  wrote:
>> >  
>> >> Reco meant Roumanian (a Latin language). Or does everybody
>> >> already know that?
>> >>   
>> >
>> > Yes, Romanian or Rumanian is Latin, but here in the context Latin is
>> > ambiguous. 
>> >  
>> 
>> My confusion stemmed from the fact I thought the correct word was
>> "Roumanian," not Romanian, which I took for a typo, exposing my
>> ignorance (which paradoxically seems to be increasing the more I know
>> (because the more I know the more I realize I don't)).
>> 
>
> Either spelling is used in Britain, and sometimes Rumanian.

You've retained those more Norman Conquest style spellings over there, I
think.


-- 
"When we encounter computer output that looks like what we produce by thinking,
we are liable to credit the computer with thought... By that rule of inference,
there would have to be an orchestra somewhere inside your CD player and a farm
in your refrigerator."  --David Halpern

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Curt]

On 2020-03-28,   wrote:
>
>> My confusion stemmed from the fact I thought the correct word was
>> "Roumanian," not Romanian, which I took for a typo, exposing my
> ^^
>> ignorance (which paradoxically seems to be increasing the more I know
>> (because the more I know the more I realize I don't)).
>
> This betrays a little your French background :-)

Yes, you're right, that's it.

> Ain't (human) languages cool? Horribly messy and fascinating at the
> same time. Perhaps as humans themselves. I love them!
>
> Cheers
> -- t


-- 
"When we encounter computer output that looks like what we produce by thinking,
we are liable to credit the computer with thought... By that rule of inference,
there would have to be an orchestra somewhere inside your CD player and a farm
in your refrigerator."  --David Halpern

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[tomas]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 09:08:23AM -, Curt wrote:
> On 2020-03-27, deloptes  wrote:
> > Curt wrote:
> >
> >> Reco meant Roumanian (a Latin language). Or does everybody
> >> already know that?
> >> 
> >
> > Yes, Romanian or Rumanian is Latin, but here in the context Latin is
> > ambiguous. 
> >
> 
> My confusion stemmed from the fact I thought the correct word was
> "Roumanian," not Romanian, which I took for a typo, exposing my
^^
> ignorance (which paradoxically seems to be increasing the more I know
> (because the more I know the more I realize I don't)).

This betrays a little your French background :-)

Ain't (human) languages cool? Horribly messy and fascinating at the
same time. Perhaps as humans themselves. I love them!

Cheers
-- t


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Joe]

On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 09:08:23 - (UTC)
Curt  wrote:

> On 2020-03-27, deloptes  wrote:
> > Curt wrote:
> >  
> >> Reco meant Roumanian (a Latin language). Or does everybody
> >> already know that?
> >>   
> >
> > Yes, Romanian or Rumanian is Latin, but here in the context Latin is
> > ambiguous. 
> >  
> 
> My confusion stemmed from the fact I thought the correct word was
> "Roumanian," not Romanian, which I took for a typo, exposing my
> ignorance (which paradoxically seems to be increasing the more I know
> (because the more I know the more I realize I don't)).
> 

Either spelling is used in Britain, and sometimes Rumanian.

-- 
Joe

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Curt]

On 2020-03-27, deloptes  wrote:
> Curt wrote:
>
>> Reco meant Roumanian (a Latin language). Or does everybody
>> already know that?
>> 
>
> Yes, Romanian or Rumanian is Latin, but here in the context Latin is
> ambiguous. 
>

My confusion stemmed from the fact I thought the correct word was
"Roumanian," not Romanian, which I took for a typo, exposing my
ignorance (which paradoxically seems to be increasing the more I know
(because the more I know the more I realize I don't)).





-- 
"When we encounter computer output that looks like what we produce by thinking,
we are liable to credit the computer with thought... By that rule of inference,
there would have to be an orchestra somewhere inside your CD player and a farm
in your refrigerator."  --David Halpern

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Vi, 27 mar 20, 10:51:46, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Jo, 26 mar 20, 18:41:10, Reco wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 08:53:35AM +, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> > > 
> > > I understand.  But some of the stuff I receive does not work as
> > > expected.  What do I do with the following PDF:
> > > 
> > >=?utf-8?B?QkhfODU0MDk2MjMwLnBkZg==?=
> > 
> > Read muttrc(5), insert "rfc2047_parameters=true" in your .muttrc.
> 
> Nice one, added. Wondering why it's not the default though...

Filled as #955198 (wishlist).

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Joe]

On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 09:41:01 +0100
 wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 11:15:12PM -0500, David Wright wrote:
> 
> > [Romans] They spoke Vulgar Latin, and that outlived the
> > Empire, evolving and dividing into the Romance languages.
> > 
> > But it's strange how an aside can kill the actual discussion of
> > email headers.  
> 
> :-)
> 
> Yet in some way the topics are strangely intertwined. Vulgar
> Latin and rfc822. Big, Bad Empires (in a slow process of decay)
> and the power of the network effect. And so on.
> 
> (OK, OK, I'll shut up now ;-)
> 
> Anyway, an interesting discussion. Thanks, y'all.
> 

A good job it didn't attract any of the list topic enforcers, or perhaps
they've all moved to a moderated web forum...

-- 
Joe

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[tomas]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 11:15:12PM -0500, David Wright wrote:

> [Romans] They spoke Vulgar Latin, and that outlived the
> Empire, evolving and dividing into the Romance languages.
> 
> But it's strange how an aside can kill the actual discussion of
> email headers.

:-)

Yet in some way the topics are strangely intertwined. Vulgar
Latin and rfc822. Big, Bad Empires (in a slow process of decay)
and the power of the network effect. And so on.

(OK, OK, I'll shut up now ;-)

Anyway, an interesting discussion. Thanks, y'all.

Cheers
-- t


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Vi, 27 mar 20, 23:15:12, David Wright wrote:
> 
> However, the actual problem that Russell introduced was how a
> character set—any character set—should be encoded in the email header
> parameter's value. And the RFC answer is "not in Base64", which is for
> unstructured fields, as illustrated by the header of my previous post.
> Mutt, as expected, writes conformant values but can be instructed to
> decode particular non-conformant ones.

So any test involving mutt as source is irrelevant.
 
> > According to
> > ,
> > it originally used ISO 8859-2.
> 
> … aka Latin-2. Not being Romanian, I can't comment on the relative
> popularity of that and Latin-10 (ISO 8859-16) or whether the latter
> was still-born. And…
> 
> > Of course, it would probably use UTF-8
> > on most modern systems.
> 
> Yes, that also seems more up-to-date and expressive, with support for
> distinguishing obscure (to me) variants like cedilla vs comma below.

Right.


Apparently Microsoft (and Adobe?) had to come up with the support for 
Romanian by themselves, because the responsible Romanian entities didn't 
bother at the time. Unfortunately they got it wrong (not blaming them, 
just stating a fact).

The wrong characters are still in use now (even though correct support 
was included in Windows 7 - for XP there was a language pack), also 
because many font creators got confused and didn't implement support 
correctly (missing characters, characters in wrong positions, etc).

This (and the fact that many Romanians don't even bother to use any
diacritics at all) makes searching for exact strings... challenging.


Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[David Wright]

On Fri 27 Mar 2020 at 12:42:17 (-0400), Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 11:12:49AM -0500, David Wright wrote:
> > On Fri 27 Mar 2020 at 17:35:19 (+0300), Reco wrote:
> > > I'm not that familiar with the languages to qualify Romanian as a Latin
> > > or a non-Latin language,
> > 
> > I think we can agree that the Romans spoke Latin!
> 
> Err... Romanian is not the language that was spoken in Rome.

I don't think anyone has said that it was. The Romans (in the sense
that I think we're also agreed on, ie those living in Rome a couple of
millennia ago) spoke Latin. As deloptes has pointed out, they didn't
speak the literary language, just as most English people don't speak
literary English. They spoke Vulgar Latin, and that outlived the
Empire, evolving and dividing into the Romance languages.

But it's strange how an aside can kill the actual discussion of
email headers.

> It is, however, considered a "Romance language", meaning it has Latin
> as one of its primary roots.
> 
> That said, I think the actual question was which character set it
> requires.

The Romanian language only came up because Andrei used it to write an
example of a filename. AIUI what's important in deciding whether to
encode it is the type of Latin, ie Latin-1 vs anything else. Pointing
out that it's been encoded here in Unicode is obvious (it's prefixed
by utf-8), but AFAICT it could have been encoded in Latin-10 just as
well. (Andrei would have to adjudicate on Latin-10's suitability for
the 1st and 10th letters, which have comma below. I think Latin-2
has the cedilla form, and Andrei's utf-8 version avoided that.)

(BTW I'm not sure about Reco's use of \uc899. Does \u mean that
c899 is in utf-8, or should it be followed by a Unicode codepoint,
as in U+c899? If the latter, then \uc899 is way off my charts.)

However, the actual problem that Russell introduced was how a
character set—any character set—should be encoded in the email header
parameter's value. And the RFC answer is "not in Base64", which is for
unstructured fields, as illustrated by the header of my previous post.
Mutt, as expected, writes conformant values but can be instructed to
decode particular non-conformant ones.

> According to
> ,
> it originally used ISO 8859-2.

… aka Latin-2. Not being Romanian, I can't comment on the relative
popularity of that and Latin-10 (ISO 8859-16) or whether the latter
was still-born. And…

> Of course, it would probably use UTF-8
> on most modern systems.

Yes, that also seems more up-to-date and expressive, with support for
distinguishing obscure (to me) variants like cedilla vs comma below.

Cheers,
David.

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[deloptes]

Curt wrote:

> Reco meant Roumanian (a Latin language). Or does everybody
> already know that?
> 

Yes, Romanian or Rumanian is Latin, but here in the context Latin is
ambiguous. 

Romanian is Latin, because it belongs to the Latin family of languages like
Italian. (well both of them descend from the Latin that was spoken
whereever it was spoken in the Roman times although the Latin that we read
in the Roman books was not spoken on the street).

In the computer context we use Latin to denote the Latin alphabeth and it's
variations in contrast to non-Latin alphabeth (Cyrillic, Hebrew, Chinese
etc). This I call the Babylon of IT. Thanks God someone came up with UTF
and Unicode ... but the damage was already done.

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with ??urubelni????)

[Russell L. Harris]

On Fri 27 Mar 2020 at 17:35:19 (+0300), Reco wrote:
I think we can agree that the Romans spoke Latin!


Actually, Latin was the official, legal language of Rome.  The
previous conquests of Alexander the Great established the Koine
dialect of Greek as the "lingua franca" of the Ancient World.  Koine
(meaning "common") was the language of commerce and trade.  Because
both Latin and Koine were in constant use, there are many "exact
equivalents" between Latin and Koine words and phrases.

I expect that, for Romans in general, fluency in Koine may have been
more common that fluency in Latin.

RLH

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Brian]

On Fri 27 Mar 2020 at 12:42:17 -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 11:12:49AM -0500, David Wright wrote:
> > On Fri 27 Mar 2020 at 17:35:19 (+0300), Reco wrote:
> > > I'm not that familiar with the languages to qualify Romanian as a Latin
> > > or a non-Latin language,
> > 
> > I think we can agree that the Romans spoke Latin!
> 
> Err... Romanian is not the language that was spoken in Rome.

Neither is Italian.
 
> It is, however, considered a "Romance language", meaning it has Latin
> as one of its primary roots.

I took David Wright's comment to have a historical aspect to it. In
which case, no one can disagree with it.

-- 
Brian.

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Curt]

On 2020-03-27, Greg Wooledge  wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 11:12:49AM -0500, David Wright wrote:
>> On Fri 27 Mar 2020 at 17:35:19 (+0300), Reco wrote:
>> > I'm not that familiar with the languages to qualify Romanian as a Latin
>> > or a non-Latin language,
>> 
>> I think we can agree that the Romans spoke Latin!
>
> Err... Romanian is not the language that was spoken in Rome.

Reco meant Roumanian (a Latin language). Or does everybody
already know that?

> It is, however, considered a "Romance language", meaning it has Latin
> as one of its primary roots.
>
> That said, I think the actual question was which character set it
> requires.  According to
>,
> it originally used ISO 8859-2.  Of course, it would probably use UTF-8
> on most modern systems.
>
>


-- 
"When we encounter computer output that looks like what we produce by thinking,
we are liable to credit the computer with thought... By that rule of inference,
there would have to be an orchestra somewhere inside your CD player and a farm
in your refrigerator."  --David Halpern

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Vi, 27 mar 20, 12:42:17, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 11:12:49AM -0500, David Wright wrote:
> > On Fri 27 Mar 2020 at 17:35:19 (+0300), Reco wrote:
> > > I'm not that familiar with the languages to qualify Romanian as a Latin
> > > or a non-Latin language,
> > 
> > I think we can agree that the Romans spoke Latin!
> 
> Err... Romanian is not the language that was spoken in Rome.
> 
> It is, however, considered a "Romance language", meaning it has Latin
> as one of its primary roots.

Yep.

> That said, I think the actual question was which character set it
> requires.  According to
> ,
> it originally used ISO 8859-2.

Unfortunately ISO 8859-2 doesn't properly support Romanian, mostly 
because the responsible entities in Romania didn't bother to come up 
with the necessary specification. Which then required ISO 8859-16...

> Of course, it would probably use UTF-8 on most modern systems.

Indeed. In my opinion there is barely a good reason to use anything else 
now, even for systems that are not meant to be used with any other 
language than English (there are also names of persons and locations to 
consider).

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[Greg Wooledge]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 11:12:49AM -0500, David Wright wrote:
> On Fri 27 Mar 2020 at 17:35:19 (+0300), Reco wrote:
> > I'm not that familiar with the languages to qualify Romanian as a Latin
> > or a non-Latin language,
> 
> I think we can agree that the Romans spoke Latin!

Err... Romanian is not the language that was spoken in Rome.

It is, however, considered a "Romance language", meaning it has Latin
as one of its primary roots.

That said, I think the actual question was which character set it
requires.  According to
,
it originally used ISO 8859-2.  Of course, it would probably use UTF-8
on most modern systems.

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments (with șurubelniță)

[David Wright]

On Fri 27 Mar 2020 at 17:35:19 (+0300), Reco wrote:
>   Hi.
> 
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 02:22:18PM +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > > or an attachment was named using non-Latin characters.
> > 
> > Is that non-Latin or non-ASCII?
> 
> I'm not that familiar with the languages to qualify Romanian as a Latin
> or a non-Latin language,

I think we can agree that the Romans spoke Latin!

> but your attachment really is:
> 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> Content-Disposition: attachment; 
> filename*=utf-8''%C8%99urubelni%C8%9B%C4%83_empty%2Etxt
> 
> So, that's Unicode, at least a part of it, namely - \uc899, \uc89b and
> \uc483 glyphs.
> rfc2047_parameters works on it as intended btw.

Yes, that looks entirely conformant with RFC 2231.

filenamethe parameter
*   is encoded
 no count, as in one chunk
=   assignment
utf-8   charset
'   delimiter
 language irrelevant
'   delimiter
%C8%99ur…   header text

> > The former would imply about half of the 
> > world's population, the latter something like two thirds or more (just 
> > guessing, didn't check numbers).

It seems that you might be conflating base64 and utf-8.

AIUI headers with structured information (with parameters) are meant
to use the RFC 2231 spec which is designed so that values can be
broken up when long, have their character set specified, and also
their language so that screen readers know how to pronounce the
letters within that character set. Obviously, utf-8 can express all
the written languages of the world, both real and fictitious.

Unstructured fields can use the =?utf-8?B?KHdpdGggyJl1cnViZWxuacibxIMp?=
type of encoding, and this post's subject line actually uses both: the
B method (above) and the Q method, =?utf-8?Q?attachments_?=.

> Even for those cases there's a legitimate need to attach a file which
> name conforms to ASCII. Source code, patches, images with names like
> 20200327143420.jpg etc.

Cheers,
David.
Topped up.

Re: [solved] Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[David Wright]

On Fri 27 Mar 2020 at 06:31:29 (+), Russell L. Harris wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 03:03:55AM +, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> > Rather than hassle with mutt, I hoped to install an auxiliary mail
> > client with GUI (such as Thunderbird) with which I could open such
> ...
> > One approach would be to get a mail account strictly for this purpose,
> > and set up a complete Thunderbird mail system using that account.
> 
> This works as I hoped it would.  It took all of two minutes to set up
> a new mail account on a domain hosted by hostgator.com, and
> Thunderbird auto-configured immediately upon being given the mail
> address and password.
> 
> In neomutt, "b" simply moves to the next message, so I must type
> ":exec bounce-message", but this for me is a good solution.

You can bind something to that command; I have

bindpager   ,b  bounce-message

in ~/.mutt/muttrc, which saves some typing.

Cheers,
David.

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[David Wright]

On Sat 28 Mar 2020 at 02:48:04 (+1300), Richard Hector wrote:
> On 28/03/20 1:22 am, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > (attaching a zero length file with the name using some special Romanian 
> > characters to this mail)
> 
> Interesting. It appears Thunderbird won't let me save that. Presumably
> because it's empty.

That's worrying. I'd be looking for other reasons.
For starters, test with a empty file having an ASCII name.

> Also the list archive seems to have thrown it away.
> 
> But that means I have no way to copy & paste the file name into Google
> Translate :-)

Orange juice and vodka.

Cheers,
David.

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Reco]

Hi.

On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 02:22:18PM +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > or an attachment was named using non-Latin characters.
> 
> Is that non-Latin or non-ASCII?

I'm not that familiar with the languages to qualify Romanian as a Latin
or a non-Latin language, but your attachment really is:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: attachment; 
filename*=utf-8''%C8%99urubelni%C8%9B%C4%83_empty%2Etxt

So, that's Unicode, at least a part of it, namely - \uc899, \uc89b and
\uc483 glyphs.
rfc2047_parameters works on it as intended btw.


> The former would imply about half of the 
> world's population, the latter something like two thirds or more (just 
> guessing, didn't check numbers).

Even for those cases there's a legitimate need to attach a file which
name conforms to ASCII. Source code, patches, images with names like
20200327143420.jpg etc.

Reco

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Richard Hector]

On 28/03/20 1:22 am, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> (attaching a zero length file with the name using some special Romanian 
> characters to this mail)

Interesting. It appears Thunderbird won't let me save that. Presumably
because it's empty.

Also the list archive seems to have thrown it away.

But that means I have no way to copy & paste the file name into Google
Translate :-)

Richard

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Dan Purgert]

On Mar 27, 2020, Dan Purgert wrote:
> On Mar 27, 2020, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > On Jo, 26 mar 20, 18:41:10, Reco wrote:
> > > On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 08:53:35AM +, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > I understand.  But some of the stuff I receive does not work as
> > > > expected.  What do I do with the following PDF:
> > > > 
> > > >=?utf-8?B?QkhfODU0MDk2MjMwLnBkZg==?=
> > > 
> > > Read muttrc(5), insert "rfc2047_parameters=true" in your .muttrc.
> > 
> > Nice one, added. Wondering why it's not the default though...
> 
> Hmm, I must have an old version of Mutt (not surprising ...); I needed
> to use "rfc2047_parameters=yes". 

Scratch that, I tacked on 'set' to the beginning, which requires the
'yes/no' syntax.



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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Dan Purgert]

On Mar 27, 2020, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Jo, 26 mar 20, 18:41:10, Reco wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 08:53:35AM +, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> > > 
> > > I understand.  But some of the stuff I receive does not work as
> > > expected.  What do I do with the following PDF:
> > > 
> > >=?utf-8?B?QkhfODU0MDk2MjMwLnBkZg==?=
> > 
> > Read muttrc(5), insert "rfc2047_parameters=true" in your .muttrc.
> 
> Nice one, added. Wondering why it's not the default though...

Hmm, I must have an old version of Mutt (not surprising ...); I needed
to use "rfc2047_parameters=yes". 



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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Vi, 27 mar 20, 14:40:21, Reco wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 10:51:46AM +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > 
> > Nice one, added. Wondering why it's not the default though...
> 
> A small correction. It's "set rfc2047_parameters=true".

set rfc2047_parameters

is already sufficient (because it's boolean).

> Why it's not the default? Usually all attachments have names that's
> encoded in 7-bit (ascii), so that tunable is not needed.
> Unless, of course, e-mail was composed by insane MUA,

As far as I can tell in this case the only practical benefit of not 
having it on by default would be to spot buggy MUAs. Other than that it 
would be just correctness for correctness sake.

> or an attachment was named using non-Latin characters.

Is that non-Latin or non-ASCII? The former would imply about half of the 
world's population, the latter something like two thirds or more (just 
guessing, didn't check numbers).

(attaching a zero length file with the name using some special Romanian 
characters to this mail)

Kind regards,
Andrei
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http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Reco]

Hi.

On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 10:51:46AM +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Jo, 26 mar 20, 18:41:10, Reco wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 08:53:35AM +, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> > > 
> > > I understand.  But some of the stuff I receive does not work as
> > > expected.  What do I do with the following PDF:
> > > 
> > >=?utf-8?B?QkhfODU0MDk2MjMwLnBkZg==?=
> > 
> > Read muttrc(5), insert "rfc2047_parameters=true" in your .muttrc.
> 
> Nice one, added. Wondering why it's not the default though...

A small correction. It's "set rfc2047_parameters=true".
Why it's not the default? Usually all attachments have names that's
encoded in 7-bit (ascii), so that tunable is not needed.
Unless, of course, e-mail was composed by insane MUA, or an attachment
was named using non-Latin characters.

Reco

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Jo, 26 mar 20, 18:41:10, Reco wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 08:53:35AM +, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> > 
> > I understand.  But some of the stuff I receive does not work as
> > expected.  What do I do with the following PDF:
> > 
> >=?utf-8?B?QkhfODU0MDk2MjMwLnBkZg==?=
> 
> Read muttrc(5), insert "rfc2047_parameters=true" in your .muttrc.

Nice one, added. Wondering why it's not the default though...

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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[solved] Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Russell L. Harris]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 03:03:55AM +, Russell L. Harris wrote:

Rather than hassle with mutt, I hoped to install an auxiliary mail
client with GUI (such as Thunderbird) with which I could open such

...

One approach would be to get a mail account strictly for this purpose,
and set up a complete Thunderbird mail system using that account.


This works as I hoped it would.  It took all of two minutes to set up
a new mail account on a domain hosted by hostgator.com, and
Thunderbird auto-configured immediately upon being given the mail
address and password.

In neomutt, "b" simply moves to the next message, so I must type
":exec bounce-message", but this for me is a good solution.

RLH

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[David Wright]

On Thu 26 Mar 2020 at 18:29:38 (+), Russell L. Harris wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 11:20:15AM -0500, David Wright wrote:

> > (I presume that you know about "v", to list attachments, and that
> > attachments can be email-type entities on which you can use "v"
> > again. List digests are like this.)
> 
> Yes; but URLview is not always successful in sorting out the links.
> Sometimes the output of URLview is (to me) indecipherable; other
> times, URLview works well.  I think the problem is that the mail
> client which cobbled together the message bungled the job; and I
> suspect that a newsletter I receive several times a week from a cattle
> raiser's association is generated by a mass mailer.

Just so there's no misunderstanding, I don't use urlview,
so the "v" and "m" commands are just using mutt and my
little mailcap file to call lynx.

BTW having to press "m" is a recent change; until stretch,
 would suffice. It's possibly explained at
https://github.com/neomutt/neomutt/issues/430

Cheers,
David.

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2020 26 Mar 12:58 -0500, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> In the past I have used Thunderbird, but not Evolution.  Can I not use
> Thunderbird for this approach?

Oh, certainly.  In the past I used kmail when I ran KDE.  After
switching back to Debian + Gnome about 18 months ago I opted to use
Evolution since it was included "for free".  Any mailer that can display
HTML + Javascript inline would work, I suppose.

In ancient times I used Pegasus on Windows 3.1.  When I switched to
Linux full time in early '98 I used Netscape Mail.  I found it
cumbersome with a multitude of mailing list subscriptions so I switched
to Mutt sometime in '99.  About two years ago I switched to neomutt.  I
see it is now shown as unavailable in Testing.

Since I get email that seems to require HTML and javascript from various
entities, this is a quick solution for me for the odd time I actually
care to look at such mail.

IMAP is out of the question for me unless I figure out some way to run a
local IMAP server.  I'm not particularly interested in doing so.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Russell L. Harris]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 11:20:15AM -0500, David Wright wrote:

On Thu 26 Mar 2020 at 03:03:55 (+), Russell L. Harris wrote:

At the moment I am running neo-mutt on Debian 9.  Once or twice a day
I receive a HTML message, typically with a PDF file as an attachment.
Picking out and viewing the links and attachments always is a hassle,
and sometimes is rather difficult.


It sounds, from some replies to this thread, as if these are not
attachments, but are references contained in the HTML.


Yes; the messages contain links to articles on the web, and some
messages have PDF attachments.


(I presume that you know about "v", to list attachments, and that
attachments can be email-type entities on which you can use "v"
again. List digests are like this.)


Yes; but URLview is not always successful in sorting out the links.
Sometimes the output of URLview is (to me) indecipherable; other
times, URLview works well.  I think the problem is that the mail
client which cobbled together the message bungled the job; and I
suspect that a newsletter I receive several times a week from a cattle
raiser's association is generated by a mass mailer.

These defects obviously are not a problem for the M$Window$ crowd, and
I am hoping that Thunderbird is able to work around them.  




I read most HTML-only emails, and the mixed ones where the text
version is seemingly unrelated to the HTML one, with "v" and then
"m" to activate a line from my mutt's mailcap_path:

 text/html; /usr/bin/lynx -force-html -localhost -stdin

The "l" command in lynx will display the links in the HTML. On
security grounds, I generally prefer not to visit them under my
own username, so I paste them into a browser.


I dislike email written in HTML, but sometimes an important message is
written in HTML; in that event, I rather use a mail client such as
Thunderbird.  




Another method I use, for example when shops send discount coupons in
HTML emails, is to type "v" in mutt and save only the HTML part in
/tmp/foo, then type Ctrl-o in a browser and open /tmp/foo.


I was not aware of that approach; thanks.



Note that, for real attachments, and HTML emails read by lynx as
above, nobody knows you've opened the email. Once you move to the
browser, then the sender knows. Side effects are not always obvious;
in the former case, banks might complain that you're not reading their
"important" missives, and companies might stop sending you their
marketing junk. In the latter case, there are obvious security implications.


I had not thought of that.  Perhaps someone should devise a method
whereby a cookie automatically is replaced by a cookie which appears
valid but in which some vital aspect of the identity of the recipient
has been altered.

RLH

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Russell L. Harris]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 06:47:55AM -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote:

As I have my own domain, it was trivial to create a mailbox on the mail
host and use Mutt/Neomutt's bounce command (b) to 'bounce' the mail in
question to that mailbox and then retrieve it with Evolution.  It's an
extra step but means that I don't have to abandon Neomutt for an
inferior mail program.


In the past I have used Thunderbird, but not Evolution.  Can I not use
Thunderbird for this approach?

RLH

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Russell L. Harris]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 10:44:14AM +0100, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

   =?utf-8?B?QkhfODU0MDk2MjMwLnBkZg==?=


This is not a PDF (it would be a very short one, mind you :)


I misspoke; I should have said "string" rather than "PDF".  But I did
not discover how to get mutt to point me to the PDF file associated
with the string.



This is a string in MIME's "Encoded-Word" encoding [1], which is used
to wrap non-ASCII stuff in an MIME metadata (i.e. header) snippet.

Following the reference, that's what you can read off it:

 =?utf-8 -- means that the actual content is an UTF-8 encoded string
  ?B -- means that what comes now is a base-64 encoding of the
above

 After the next "?" comes the data:

 QkhfODU0MDk2MjMwLnBkZg==

(the two trailing equals signs are padding, part of the base64 thingy;
the last ?= are MIME delimiters according to [1]).

Base-64 decoding it [2] yields:

 BH_854096230.pdf

This looks like a file name to me.


Indeed, it is.  But I do not know where the file resides.  


Note that, in hindsight, all this encoding nonsense wouldn't have
been necessary, because the original above *is* already plain
ASCII. This is a case of stupid software obscuring things to make
users even more stupid and dependent [3].


Agreed; but I cannot force the other guy to use an intelligent mail client.


The PDF itself is somewhere else (perhaps in a MIME part somewhere
in that mail, perhaps sitting in some file system, whatever).

Cheers

[1] 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multipurpose_Internet_Mail_Extensions#Encoded-Word
[2] In Emacs, just mark that string and M-x base64-decode-region.
  Your editor sure has a way to do this, hasn't it?


I run Emacs, but I did not know about "M-x base64-decode-region";
thanks.


[3] I don't think it's really intentional. It's an unfortunate and
  contagious antipattern, a bit like prions transmit Creutzfeld-Jacob.
  But nowadays I suspect that some actors help its expansion because
  it helps their business interests. Or something.


I think it is just the general incompetence and arrogance of the
micro$oft culture.

RLH

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[David Wright]

On Thu 26 Mar 2020 at 03:03:55 (+), Russell L. Harris wrote:
> At the moment I am running neo-mutt on Debian 9.  Once or twice a day
> I receive a HTML message, typically with a PDF file as an attachment.
> Picking out and viewing the links and attachments always is a hassle,
> and sometimes is rather difficult.

It sounds, from some replies to this thread, as if these are not
attachments, but are references contained in the HTML.

(I presume that you know about "v", to list attachments, and that
attachments can be email-type entities on which you can use "v"
again. List digests are like this.)

> Rather than hassle with mutt, I hoped to install an auxiliary mail
> client with GUI (such as Thunderbird) with which I could open such
> messages, view the links, and print the attachments.

I read most HTML-only emails, and the mixed ones where the text
version is seemingly unrelated to the HTML one, with "v" and then
"m" to activate a line from my mutt's mailcap_path:

  text/html; /usr/bin/lynx -force-html -localhost -stdin

The "l" command in lynx will display the links in the HTML. On
security grounds, I generally prefer not to visit them under my
own username, so I paste them into a browser.

> But Thunderbird is demanding the URLs of POP and SMPT servers, and I
> do not wish to allow Thunderbird to mess around with my mail, other
> than viewing specific messages.
> 
> One approach would be to get a mail account strictly for this purpose,
> and set up a complete Thunderbird mail system using that account.
> 
> But is there a better solution?

Another method I use, for example when shops send discount coupons in
HTML emails, is to type "v" in mutt and save only the HTML part in
/tmp/foo, then type Ctrl-o in a browser and open /tmp/foo.

Whether any of these solutions is better depends on how frequently you
use them, what the trade-off is, how much you can automate them, etc.

Note that, for real attachments, and HTML emails read by lynx as
above, nobody knows you've opened the email. Once you move to the
browser, then the sender knows. Side effects are not always obvious;
in the former case, banks might complain that you're not reading their
"important" missives, and companies might stop sending you their
marketing junk. In the latter case, there are obvious security implications.

Cheers,
David.

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Reco]

Hi.

On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 09:26:30AM -0300, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote:
> On 26/03/2020 00:03, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> > At the moment I am running neo-mutt on Debian 9.  Once or twice a day
> > I receive a HTML message, typically with a PDF file as an attachment.
> > Picking out and viewing the links and attachments always is a hassle,
> > and sometimes is rather difficult.
> >
> > Rather than hassle with mutt, I hoped to install an auxiliary mail
> > client with GUI (such as Thunderbird) with which I could open such
> > messages, view the links, and print the attachments.
> >
> > But Thunderbird is demanding the URLs of POP and SMPT servers, and I
> > do not wish to allow Thunderbird to mess around with my mail, other
> > than viewing specific messages.
> >
> > One approach would be to get a mail account strictly for this purpose,
> > and set up a complete Thunderbird mail system using that account.
> >
> > But is there a better solution?
>
> If neo-mutt can save the email as a .eml file (which is basically just

... a single e-mail in an old good mbox format. Yep, neomutt can do this.
No mutt user usually bothers calling it ".eml" though.

Reco

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Reco]

Hi.

On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 08:53:35AM +, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 10:24:38AM +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > Opening pdfs in a reader is trivial with mutt. Just press 'v' and then
> > 'Return' on the pdf attachment. It should be opened in your default pdf
> > viewer. This should work also for 'html' parts to be opened in your
> > default browser.
> 
> I understand.  But some of the stuff I receive does not work as
> expected.  What do I do with the following PDF:
> 
>=?utf-8?B?QkhfODU0MDk2MjMwLnBkZg==?=

Read muttrc(5), insert "rfc2047_parameters=true" in your .muttrc.

Reco

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Erwan David]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 12:47:55PM CET, Nate Bargmann  said:
> As I have my own domain, it was trivial to create a mailbox on the mail
> host and use Mutt/Neomutt's bounce command (b) to 'bounce' the mail in
> question to that mailbox and then retrieve it with Evolution.  It's an
> extra step but means that I don't have to abandon Neomutt for an
> inferior mail program.
> 
> - Nate

I use mutt as an imap client, thus I can access the same account from
another MUA when needed. No need to add another box (and note that the
flagged messages in mutt (F) are the messages with a star in
Thunderbird, useful to find them easily


-- 
Erwan

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Dan Purgert]

On Mar 26, 2020, Tixy wrote:
> On Thu, 2020-03-26 at 07:38 -0400, Dan Purgert wrote:
> > As you said, the correct approach would be utilizing IMAP -- however,
> > whether or not there is IMAP access is entirely dependent on the
> > server's configuration.  Offhand I don't know of any that _only_
> > support
> > POP3 these days; but there's always the chance of that.
> 
> I just check my old ISP who I still pay for using the old email address
> I had with them, and their FAQ says, POP only, no IMAP.

Guess I'm lucky then - have never tied myself to an ISP's email address
for anything beyond what they required me to (e.g. logging into their
service to pay the bill).

-- 
|_|O|_| 
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Eduardo M KALINOWSKI]

On 26/03/2020 00:03, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> At the moment I am running neo-mutt on Debian 9.  Once or twice a day
> I receive a HTML message, typically with a PDF file as an attachment.
> Picking out and viewing the links and attachments always is a hassle,
> and sometimes is rather difficult.
>
> Rather than hassle with mutt, I hoped to install an auxiliary mail
> client with GUI (such as Thunderbird) with which I could open such
> messages, view the links, and print the attachments.
>
> But Thunderbird is demanding the URLs of POP and SMPT servers, and I
> do not wish to allow Thunderbird to mess around with my mail, other
> than viewing specific messages.
>
> One approach would be to get a mail account strictly for this purpose,
> and set up a complete Thunderbird mail system using that account.
>
> But is there a better solution?
>
> RLH
>
If neo-mutt can save the email as a .eml file (which is basically just
the headers and body as-is) (and I'd be surprised if it can't), you can
open that file in Thunderbird.

-- 
Eduardo M KALINOWSKI
edua...@kalinowski.com.br

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Tixy]

On Thu, 2020-03-26 at 07:38 -0400, Dan Purgert wrote:
> As you said, the correct approach would be utilizing IMAP -- however,
> whether or not there is IMAP access is entirely dependent on the
> server's configuration.  Offhand I don't know of any that _only_
> support
> POP3 these days; but there's always the chance of that.

I just check my old ISP who I still pay for using the old email address
I had with them, and their FAQ says, POP only, no IMAP.

I bet a lot of those ISP's that still provide email for customers only
support POP3, they certainly never use to support IMAP and I can't see
them adding it, it's no extra benefit to them and IMAP takes more CPU
and storage resources (with pop being default delete on download).

-- 
Tixy

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Nate Bargmann]

As I have my own domain, it was trivial to create a mailbox on the mail
host and use Mutt/Neomutt's bounce command (b) to 'bounce' the mail in
question to that mailbox and then retrieve it with Evolution.  It's an
extra step but means that I don't have to abandon Neomutt for an
inferior mail program.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Web: https://www.n0nb.us
Projects: https://github.com/N0NB
GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819



signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Dan Purgert]

On Mar 26, 2020, Dan Purgert wrote:
> On Mar 26, 2020, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 10:24:38AM +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > > Opening pdfs in a reader is trivial with mutt. Just press 'v' and then
> > > 'Return' on the pdf attachment. It should be opened in your default pdf
> > > viewer. This should work also for 'html' parts to be opened in your
> > > default browser.
> > 
> > I understand.  But some of the stuff I receive does not work as
> > expected.  What do I do with the following PDF:
> > 
> >=?utf-8?B?QkhfODU0MDk2MjMwLnBkZg==?=
> 
> delete it.

I misinterpreted that as the actual filename received (a la "your
package is ready!" type spam), and not encoding of the filename crammed
somewhere into the body of the message.


-- 
|_|O|_| 
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Dan Purgert]

On Mar 26, 2020, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 10:24:38AM +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > Opening pdfs in a reader is trivial with mutt. Just press 'v' and then
> > 'Return' on the pdf attachment. It should be opened in your default pdf
> > viewer. This should work also for 'html' parts to be opened in your
> > default browser.
> 
> I understand.  But some of the stuff I receive does not work as
> expected.  What do I do with the following PDF:
> 
>=?utf-8?B?QkhfODU0MDk2MjMwLnBkZg==?=

delete it.


-- 
|_|O|_| 
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Dan Purgert]

On Mar 26, 2020, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> [...]
> URLs: install urlview and press Ctrl-b to select the url you want (will 
> be passed to your default browser)

Nice to know! Something new for the toolbox!



-- 
|_|O|_| 
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Dan Purgert]

On Mar 25, 2020, David Christensen wrote:
> On 2020-03-25 20:03, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> > At the moment I am running neo-mutt on Debian 9.  Once or twice a day
> > I receive a HTML message, typically with a PDF file as an attachment.
> > Picking out and viewing the links and attachments always is a hassle,
> > and sometimes is rather difficult.
> > 
> > Rather than hassle with mutt, I hoped to install an auxiliary mail
> > client with GUI (such as Thunderbird) with which I could open such
> > messages, view the links, and print the attachments.
> > 
> > But Thunderbird is demanding the URLs of POP and SMPT servers, and I
> > do not wish to allow Thunderbird to mess around with my mail, other
> > than viewing specific messages.
> > 
> > One approach would be to get a mail account strictly for this purpose,
> > and set up a complete Thunderbird mail system using that account.
> > 
> > But is there a better solution?
> > 
> > RLH
> 
> If you configure all your e-mail clients to leave the messages on the
> server, you should be able to access the same e-mail server account from
> multiple clients.  Current clients using IMAP seem to work this way
> (Thunderbird, Apple Mail).
> 
> 
> When I used POP (POP3?) clients in the past (Outlook Express, Outlook,
> Thunderbird), the clients defaulted to downloading and removing messages
> from the server.  I don't know if that was part of POP or a setting in the
> client.  If the latter, you might be able to tune your POP clients to
> leave the messages on the server.  This would enable access from
> multiple clients.

It is a property of POP itself. It's exactly like a post office (well,
more specifically, a PO box) -- once you've removed your letters from
the post office, they don't have a copy anymore.  And, as I understand
it, kind of the reason for it being named "Post Office Protocol".

As you said, the correct approach would be utilizing IMAP -- however,
whether or not there is IMAP access is entirely dependent on the
server's configuration.  Offhand I don't know of any that _only_ support
POP3 these days; but there's always the chance of that.


-- 
|_|O|_| 
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[tomas]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 08:53:35AM +, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 10:24:38AM +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> >Opening pdfs in a reader is trivial with mutt. Just press 'v' and then
> >'Return' on the pdf attachment. It should be opened in your default pdf
> >viewer. This should work also for 'html' parts to be opened in your
> >default browser.
> 
> I understand.  But some of the stuff I receive does not work as
> expected.  What do I do with the following PDF:
> 
>=?utf-8?B?QkhfODU0MDk2MjMwLnBkZg==?=

This is not a PDF (it would be a very short one, mind you :)

This is a string in MIME's "Encoded-Word" encoding [1], which is used
to wrap non-ASCII stuff in an MIME metadata (i.e. header) snippet.

Following the reference, that's what you can read off it:

  =?utf-8 -- means that the actual content is an UTF-8 encoded string
   ?B -- means that what comes now is a base-64 encoding of the
 above

  After the next "?" comes the data:

  QkhfODU0MDk2MjMwLnBkZg==

(the two trailing equals signs are padding, part of the base64 thingy;
the last ?= are MIME delimiters according to [1]).

Base-64 decoding it [2] yields:

  BH_854096230.pdf

This looks like a file name to me. Note that, in hindsight, all this
encoding nonsense wouldn't have been necessary, because the original
above *is* already plain ASCII. This is a case of stupid software 
obscuring things to make users even more stupid and dependent [3].

The PDF itself is somewhere else (perhaps in a MIME part somewhere
in that mail, perhaps sitting in some file system, whatever).

Cheers

[1] 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multipurpose_Internet_Mail_Extensions#Encoded-Word
[2] In Emacs, just mark that string and M-x base64-decode-region.
   Your editor sure has a way to do this, hasn't it?
[3] I don't think it's really intentional. It's an unfortunate and
   contagious antipattern, a bit like prions transmit Creutzfeld-Jacob.
   But nowadays I suspect that some actors help its expansion because
   it helps their business interests. Or something.

-- tomás


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Description: Digital signature

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Russell L. Harris]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 10:24:38AM +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

Opening pdfs in a reader is trivial with mutt. Just press 'v' and then
'Return' on the pdf attachment. It should be opened in your default pdf
viewer. This should work also for 'html' parts to be opened in your
default browser.


I understand.  But some of the stuff I receive does not work as
expected.  What do I do with the following PDF:

   =?utf-8?B?QkhfODU0MDk2MjMwLnBkZg==?=



I'm assuming you already tried urlview and / or having the html mails
rendered with some text browser (I'm using w3m).

URLs: install urlview and press Ctrl-b to select the url you want (will
be passed to your default browser)


And urlview has difficulty with some of the links.


HTML rendering: install w3m and add 'auto_view text/html' to your
muttrc. You might also want to set 'alternative_order' to your
preference (I have it set to prefer text over html as I'm using mutt
mostly to read Debian lists).


I need to check these, tomorrow; I thank you, Andrei.



As per your other message you are using getmail to download everything
via POP3 to a local Maildir folder. This is important information!



There surely are ways to skip the wizard.


But is it worth the time and effort?



The only question remains whether Thunderbird can access Maildirs
directly.


I do not mind saving the message to a non-maildir, but I suppose that
means a mbox file.

All things considered, I am thinking that the best solution is to set
up a POP account on another domain and configure Thunderbird to fetch
mail from that location.  Then all I need to do in mutt is to forward
troublesome messages to that account.

RLH

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Joe]

On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 21:51:51 -0700
David Christensen  wrote:

> On 2020-03-25 20:03, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> > At the moment I am running neo-mutt on Debian 9.  Once or twice a
> > day I receive a HTML message, typically with a PDF file as an
> > attachment. Picking out and viewing the links and attachments
> > always is a hassle, and sometimes is rather difficult.
> > 
> > Rather than hassle with mutt, I hoped to install an auxiliary mail
> > client with GUI (such as Thunderbird) with which I could open such
> > messages, view the links, and print the attachments.
> > 
> > But Thunderbird is demanding the URLs of POP and SMPT servers, and I
> > do not wish to allow Thunderbird to mess around with my mail, other
> > than viewing specific messages.
> > 
> > One approach would be to get a mail account strictly for this
> > purpose, and set up a complete Thunderbird mail system using that
> > account.
> > 
> > But is there a better solution?
> > 
> > RLH  
> 
> If you configure all your e-mail clients to leave the messages on the 
> server, you should be able to access the same e-mail server account
> from multiple clients.  Current clients using IMAP seem to work this
> way (Thunderbird, Apple Mail).

IMAP is intended to keep the mail on the server, POP3 isn't.
> 
> 
> When I used POP (POP3?) clients in the past (Outlook Express,
> Outlook, Thunderbird), the clients defaulted to downloading and
> removing messages from the server.

That is the normal behaviour of POP3. It was widely offered in the days
of expensive disc space, when mail hosting businesses didn't want to
store your email.

> I don't know if that was part of
> POP or a setting in the client.  If the latter, you might be able to
> tune your POP clients to leave the messages on the server.  This
> would enable access from multiple clients.
> 
There is a POP3 directive KEEP which is used for debugging and does not
delete the mail on the server.

-- 
Joe

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Jo, 26 mar 20, 03:03:55, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> At the moment I am running neo-mutt on Debian 9.  Once or twice a day
> I receive a HTML message, typically with a PDF file as an attachment.
> Picking out and viewing the links and attachments always is a hassle,
> and sometimes is rather difficult.

Opening pdfs in a reader is trivial with mutt. Just press 'v' and then 
'Return' on the pdf attachment. It should be opened in your default pdf 
viewer. This should work also for 'html' parts to be opened in your 
default browser.

I'm assuming you already tried urlview and / or having the html mails 
rendered with some text browser (I'm using w3m).

URLs: install urlview and press Ctrl-b to select the url you want (will 
be passed to your default browser)

HTML rendering: install w3m and add 'auto_view text/html' to your 
muttrc. You might also want to set 'alternative_order' to your 
preference (I have it set to prefer text over html as I'm using mutt 
mostly to read Debian lists).

> Rather than hassle with mutt, I hoped to install an auxiliary mail
> client with GUI (such as Thunderbird) with which I could open such
> messages, view the links, and print the attachments.

As per your other message you are using getmail to download everything 
via POP3 to a local Maildir folder. This is important information!
 
> But Thunderbird is demanding the URLs of POP and SMPT servers, and I
> do not wish to allow Thunderbird to mess around with my mail, other
> than viewing specific messages.

There surely are ways to skip the wizard. The only question remains 
whether Thunderbird can access Maildirs directly. I would have suggested 
Claws Mail if it had support for Maildir (as far as I recall the plugin 
was buggy and unmaintained).

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Russell L. Harris]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 09:51:51PM -0700, David Christensen wrote:
If you configure all your e-mail clients to leave the messages on the 
server, you should be able to access the same e-mail server account 
from multiple clients.  Current clients using IMAP seem to work this 
way (Thunderbird, Apple Mail).


When I used POP (POP3?) clients in the past (Outlook Express, Outlook, 
Thunderbird), the clients defaulted to downloading and removing 
messages from the server.  I don't know if that was part of POP or a 
setting in the client.  If the latter, you might be able to tune your 
POP clients to leave the messages on the server.  This would enable 
access from multiple clients.


A related issue is encryption on the incoming and outgoing 
connections. Current clients and servers seem to use some variant of 
TLS for both.


I do not like IMAP; POP is better for my needs.

Things now are working well using getmail to download from POP3 to the
maildir on my computer.  And I have getmail set to mark for deletion
after download.  


As to leaving messages on the server: until a few years ago I was
working in more than one location and thus was using web interface
clients, but when I switched ISP the download (using getmail) to get
the messages from the POP3 server to my machine took a number of
24-hour days.  That was an expensive lesson.  And I am glad to be back
with mutt, as opposed to web interface.

getmail has the ability to use the standard method of encryption for
the transfer.

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 25 March 2020 23:03:55 Russell L. Harris wrote:

> At the moment I am running neo-mutt on Debian 9.  Once or twice a day
> I receive a HTML message, typically with a PDF file as an attachment.
> Picking out and viewing the links and attachments always is a hassle,
> and sometimes is rather difficult.
>
> Rather than hassle with mutt, I hoped to install an auxiliary mail
> client with GUI (such as Thunderbird) with which I could open such
> messages, view the links, and print the attachments.
>
> But Thunderbird is demanding the URLs of POP and SMPT servers, and I
> do not wish to allow Thunderbird to mess around with my mail, other
> than viewing specific messages.
>
> One approach would be to get a mail account strictly for this purpose,
> and set up a complete Thunderbird mail system using that account.
>
> But is there a better solution?
>
> RLH

Fetchmail as a daemon using procmail as an MTA, procmail driveing all the 
spam/virus filters. What survives that gauntlet dumped 
into /var/spool/mail and a dbus message sent to kmail telling it to go 
get the incoming mail.

Computers are supposed to reduce your work, and this flow reduces 
servicing an email to two clicks plus whatever typing I want to do.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments

[David Christensen]

On 2020-03-25 20:03, Russell L. Harris wrote:

At the moment I am running neo-mutt on Debian 9.  Once or twice a day
I receive a HTML message, typically with a PDF file as an attachment.
Picking out and viewing the links and attachments always is a hassle,
and sometimes is rather difficult.

Rather than hassle with mutt, I hoped to install an auxiliary mail
client with GUI (such as Thunderbird) with which I could open such
messages, view the links, and print the attachments.

But Thunderbird is demanding the URLs of POP and SMPT servers, and I
do not wish to allow Thunderbird to mess around with my mail, other
than viewing specific messages.

One approach would be to get a mail account strictly for this purpose,
and set up a complete Thunderbird mail system using that account.

But is there a better solution?

RLH


If you configure all your e-mail clients to leave the messages on the 
server, you should be able to access the same e-mail server account from 
multiple clients.  Current clients using IMAP seem to work this way 
(Thunderbird, Apple Mail).



When I used POP (POP3?) clients in the past (Outlook Express, Outlook, 
Thunderbird), the clients defaulted to downloading and removing messages 
from the server.  I don't know if that was part of POP or a setting in 
the client.  If the latter, you might be able to tune your POP clients 
to leave the messages on the server.  This would enable access from 
multiple clients.



A related issue is encryption on the incoming and outgoing connections. 
Current clients and servers seem to use some variant of TLS for both.



David