[Mailman-Users] Attachment header "mangling"

[Steve Burling]

I put the "mangling" in quotes because I don't know whether it's considered 
legal or not...

This is Mailman 2.1.4, by the way...

Say I send a message to a list that I'm on, with a copy directly to myself. 
To that message, I attach a document with a really long name, like:

Response to Technical Issues - ETC - 
2004-02-28-v3-LetsMakeThisReallyReallyLongByAddingManyMoreWordsToTheTitle.d
oc

In the copy of the message that comes directly to me, the headers in the 
attachment look like this (line numbers inserted so you can tell where the 
line breaks really were):

1. Content-Type: application/msword;
2. name="Response to Technical Issues - ETC - 
2004-02-28-v3-LetsMakeThisReallyReallyLongByAddingManyMoreWordsToTheTitle.d
oc"
3. Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
4. Content-Disposition: attachment;
5. filename="Response to Technical Issues - ETC - 
2004-02-28-v3-LetsMakeThisReallyReallyLongByAddingManyMoreWordsToTheTitle.d
oc";
6. size=19742

Note that the 'name="...' and 'filename="...' elements were each one long 
line.

In the copy of the message that comes to me via the list, the corresponding 
headers in the attachment look something like:

1. Content-Type: application/msword; name="Response to Technical Issues
2. <tab>- ETC -2004-02-28-v3-
LetsMakeThisReallyReallyLongByAddingManyMoreWordsToTheTitle.doc"
3. Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
4. Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Response to Technical Issues
5. <tab>- ETC 
-2004-02-28-v3-LetsMakeThisReallyReallyLongByAddingManyMoreWordsToTheTitle.
doc";
6. <tab>size=19742

I've slightly changed the place that the long lines were broken, in hopes
that this message will make it through with its formatting mostly intact, 
but you get the idea.  What Mailman seems to be doing is reflowing the 
header -- has moved the 'name="...' and 'filename="...' elements up onto 
the end of the previous line, then decided that the resulting line was too 
long and broken it in the middle of a string.

This seems wrong to me (and to our director :-).  But maybe it's legal, and 
it's the client's fault for not properly re-assembling the header?

-- 
Steve Burling                                    <mailto:srb at umich.edu>
University of Michigan, ICPSR                    Voice: +1 734 615.3779
330 Packard Street                               FAX:   +1 734 647.8700
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2910