Mail structure (Re: Extra Header field)

David Faure dfaure at klaralvdalens-datakonsult.se
Mon Jul 12 16:51:32 CEST 2004


On Monday 12 July 2004 16:27, Joon Radley wrote:
> 1) The Kolab XML format is encapsulated in a multipart/alternative content
> type as follows:
> 
> Content-type: multipart/alternative; boundary="STUPID-123456"
> 
> --STUPID-123456 
> Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> This is a Kolab Groupware object. To view this object you will need a email 
> client that can understand the Kolab Groupware format. For a list of such
> email clients please visit http:://www.kolab.org/kolab-clients.html 
> 
> --STUPID-123456
> Content-type: application/x-vnd.kolab.note
> Content-Transport-Encoding: base64
> 
> AABBDNNDKIJSGHGSHTUHAK==
> 
> --STUPID-123456--

This looks quite good. A much needed clarification, and an easy way to implement
the missing plain text.
 
> 2) When there are attachments associated with the object the message is
> encapsulated in a multipart/mixed content type with the
> multipart/alternative encapsulation described in 1 as the first body part in
> the multipart.

This needs clarification. There are two ways to read this.
Are you thinking of
2a)
  multipart/alternative
      text/plain
      multipart/mixed
           application/x-vnd.kolab.note
           some_other_attachment

or 2b)
  multipart/mixed
      multipart/alternative
           text/plain
           application/x-vnd.kolab.note
      some_other_attachment

Karl Heinz mentionned that 2a) might not be legal? (needs to be checked)
But in any case 2b) looks very inconsistent... The parsing when looking for
the XML would have to really take both cases into account, and the code for
adding an attachment would have to restructure the whole thing....
It would be much better and cleaner to have a single structure that works
for both cases.
In case multipart/alternative (which I don't know much about) is a problem,
why not use
multipart/mixed
   text/plain
   application/x-vnd.kolab.note
   some_other_attachment
?   
Most mail clients will show the first text/plain attachment, no?

-- 
David Faure -- faure at kde.org, dfaure at klaralvdalens-datakonsult.se
Qt/KDE/KOffice developer
Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, Platform-independent software solutions




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