Are .ems attachments necessary?

[Todd]

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rhkelly wrote:
> W. D. wrote:
[...]
>>Can anyone explain why these .ems attachments are required?
>
> They are not.

It's also not required that anyone use a mailer that shows RFC
compliant MIME messages as attachments when they are clearly marked to
be shown inline with a content type of text/plain.

> They are here to demonstrate that some folks do not understand that
> mailing lists and news-group posting *shuold not* have any
> attachments, unless it is explicitly in the charter of the list or
> the newsgroup.

Can you show me any charter at all for the list?  I saw nothing
specific that would cover this sort of thing when I signed up, nor is
any such charter posted here regularly.  What other unwritten rules
should we all be aware of?

I'd say the fact that the mailman software used to run the list knows
how to handle PGP/MIME formated messages and to add it's footer
without breaking them means that the authors of the list software
don't share your view that mailing list and news group postings
shouldn't contain MIME (they are not really attachments any more than
a text/plain body part is an attachment).

I think that if PGP/MIME bothers some folks so much, they should
either ignore messages from those who send in that format, kindly
persuade the sender of such messages that inline is better, or upgrade
to a MIME compliant MUA.

Using inline pgp signatures is something I only do as a convenience so
that my signatures can be checked by as many people as possible with
as little difficulty as possible, and because the default archiver
that ships with mailman isn't yet smart enough to handle MIME
properly.

I would much prefer that people got with the program and started
complaining upstream to the authors of crippled MUA's.  I often think
I should send everything PGP/MIME, just to help speed that process
along.  Obviously, if no one pushes for a standard to be adopted,
we'll be stuck with people trying to foist inline signatures on the
rest of us for another 10 years.

- -- 
Todd        OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xD654075A | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
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