[Fw: [OT] Content-Disposition: inline?]

[David K. Trudgett]

--DocE+STaALJfprDB
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On Thursday 2001-09-13 at 10:51:30 -0400, Justin R. Miller wrote:

>=20
> Anyway, I just got a mail from a user on a rather low-tech mailing
> list complaining that all of my mail comes up blank with two
> attachments -- the two parts mentioned above.  She's using:
>=20
> 	X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.3018.1300
>=20
> I'll bet my life savings on which one of us has the real problem :-D
> Regardless, I was wondering if anyone would be able to confirm for
> me what exactly that is? =20

The answer is that Outlook Express (and Outlook, too, I believe) is
broken (deliberately). First of all, the content is text/plain, and
second of all, the disposition is inline. This means that the MUA is
supposed to display the content inline (as part of the message body,
as opposed to being shown as an attachment). OE deliberately ignores
this and shows both message and signature as attachments. One
correspondent even said that it was flagged as an "invalid"
attachment, so he didn't open it.

Apart from that, PGP/MIME (now OpenPGP I believe) has been a standard
for some time, certainly enough time for major MUA's to come to terms
with it.

This is unconscionable behaviour on the part of Microsoft. My response
to this is to politely explain the problem to the correspondent, and
suggest that they get an email program from a reputable organisation
that does not deliberately hobble their products by introducing
incompatibilities.=20

I also make it clear indirectly that I am not prepared to "solve" the
problem by not signing my email. This has a couple of effects (besides
annoying the hell out of some people, I mean). First, it makes the
point that signing (and by extension, encrypting) email is very
important (to me, at least). It is so important that I am willing to
annoy my friends and other correspondents with it. Second, it alerts
people to the types of practices that Microsoft engages in, which they
otherwise would most likely not be aware of. Third, in a percentage of
cases (much smaller than it should be) people actually decide to use a
better email program, and therefore use one less Microsoft product.

Note, however, that to my knowledge, not a single one of my
correspondents (besides my wife, but she only uses it with me) has
adopted the use of encryption technology. I'll leave it as an exercise
for the reader to work out why.


David Trudgett




--DocE+STaALJfprDB
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.3ia

iQCVAgUBO6FK7aQMiROUOqeNAQEkWAP7BV6jRnqpluabi3Lpqd0pVftJcjiAD2UC
3ZB84qUu19AZkcmBmy5IGqLgmqYfNbLqiQTkpp2hFpeCQ4xX7etHsRLiq+6JiYWB
NWiPxl2E1wJcXMW5n9nkeCF9rALhpq+1SxYTEb7HPtTCVUmtQvrGAcVXqwtxatVz
ZgUSqylELmY=
=VOjF
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--DocE+STaALJfprDB--