content-type text (was Re: more on hypermail-2a14-pl2)

From: Daniel Stenberg <Daniel.Stenberg_at_sth.frontec.se_at_hypermail-project.org>
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 00:19:37 +0100 (MET)
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.10.9903050012110.15573-100000_at_metal.sth.frontec.se>

On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Craig A Summerhill wrote:

> I am guessing that the reason it is doing this is because the headers of
> the message contain a "Content-Type:" field. In fact, both of these
> messages came from me and were generated using ELM. ELM predates MIME by
> a decade, but it does insert "Content-Type: text" into the header of the
> message.

I've got a similar report from Mick Dwyer <dwyer_at_serc.rmit.edu.au> previously, which describes the problem like:

I've been using hypermail-2.0alpha14. Found it a useful program, with the exception of one problem.

We have a number of mail clients (emacs) which write the Content-Type of 'text/plain' messages as 'text'. Eg;  

----8<----
...
X-Mailer: mh-e-5.0.2 (GNU Emacs 20.3.1)
...
Content-Type: text
...
----8<----

He suggested another cure, but I think it is the exact same problem.

> I believe a preferred action in this case, would be to check for the
> existence of the "Mime-Version:" header *first*. Then, if the
> "Mime-Version" declaration is positve, check for "Content-Type:" and MIME
> parts.

The check for the Mime-Version: header is already made. It would be very easy to make the Content-Type: check require the mime-header to be present for that to be parsed at all. The question that remains is if this can happen even when some old mailer try to send a MIME mail?

Wouldn't the best fix for this be to accept "Content-Type: text" as if it was identical to "Content-Type: text/plain" ?

So OK, I made this suggested action in the parse.c file I just checked in (1.4). I can still change it to a mime-header check if that is what people think is necessary...

--
             Daniel Stenberg - http://www.fts.frontec.se/~dast
   ech`echo xiun|tr nu oc|sed 'sx\([sx]\)\([xoi]\)xo un\2\1 is xg'`ol

Received on Fri 05 Mar 1999 01:23:15 AM GMT