Re: Albrecht Dreß e-mails get filtered on the YDL list (was RE: [IMPORTANT] SOUND!!!!)

[Albrecht Dreß]

Am 13.01.05 01:22 schrieb(en) Longman, Bill:
>> My MUA, Outlook, sees it, basically, as you pointed out, Albrecht, in
> your
> previous post: multipart/signed etc. I wonder if there's a way to get
> mailman to handle the signed messages better.

The treatment of multipart/signed messages by mailman as it is now is
*absolutely* correct.

> Specifically, instead of
> adding a multipart attachment if the original is text/plain, just stick
> the
> list trailer at the end of that part and keep the message.
> 
> As long as it went outside the signed section, that would work.

Well, how should that work? Multipart/signed is defined as a container  
with exactly two parts, the entire first one (which in turn may again be a  
multipart/something) is used to calculate the hash, and the second part  
contains the encrypted hash. So adding it to the text/plain content would  
render the signature invalid.

Simply adding the YDL list info part, i.e. constructing a message like

multipart/signed  <- message top-level content type
   +- text/plain   <- my gibberish
   +- application/pgp-signature <- crypted hash == signature
   +- text/plain   <- YDL list info, simply added

imho clearly violates RFC 3156 which explicitly states that "The  
multipart/signed body MUST consist of exactly two parts." Any receiving  
MUA might refuse to display the second text/plain part or even the whole  
message, as it is apparently malformed.

Please note also that the text/plain from my message part even contains a  
"Content-Disposition: inline" header which according to RFC 2183 [1]  
*should* instruct the receiving MUA to display it.

I guess the problem is that Outlook doesn't really understand what these
parts are about. Why should it? It hasn't been developed by Microsnot,
hasn't it? And that stuff doesn't look like Microsnot crap, so better
don't show it to the user. This MUA is simply broken, and imho it's  
neither mailman's nor balsa's (my sending MUA) task to provide any hacks  
to work around that.

So I think you have two choices: call Microsnot and complain about this  
Outlook bug, or switch to a better MUA. I recommend using either Mozilla's  
mailer if you are forced to use Winbloze, or (better) switch to Linux and  
use Balsa/kmail/evo/... - *everything* is better!

Cheers, Albrecht.

[1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2183.txt

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Albrecht Dreß  -  Johanna-Kirchner-Straße 13  -  D-53123 Bonn (Germany)
        Phone (+49) 228 6199571  -  mailto:albrecht.dress at arcor.de
    GnuPG public key:  http://home.arcor.de/dralbrecht.dress/pubkey.asc
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