attaching or inlining? what to do when you're stuck with a stupid mail client???[Ay

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Shachar Shemesh wrote:

> I don't think that's a good idea. I think "looks like text" is 
> difficult. I don't know how Japanese resources look like, nor how 
> Keyboard layouts in Spanish. I'd rather go with the file extension.

file(1) is your friend. Mime types are completely unreliable,
and I see no point into forcing people use specific extensions.

> How about this - I'll keep them as attachments. If we find out people 
> can't reply to them, we'll change it? I'll also make sure that messages 
> that have inline patches are passed as is, so that your favourite method 
> will still be supported. Sounds good?

No, it doesn't. I can't easily reply to a message with an attachemnt,
in that the attachemtn is not being quoated in the reply. Not Good (TM).
I see no point in having such a filter if we don't do inlining, really.

> I think they way people learn what to do is by receiving feedback. This 
> is a chance to automate the feedback mechanism.

I wouldn't worry about it for now. Let's see what we get out of the
filter first, I have a strong suspicion there will be _very_ few
emails that would need 'bouncing'. At which point an email from a
real person is more polite and a better feedback. If we keep having
a problem, we can think of automating it, but until then it's a
solution looking for a problem.

-- 
Dimi.