[Python-Dev] Completing the email6 API changes.

[R. David Murray]

On Tue, 03 Sep 2013 10:56:36 +0900, "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
> R. David Murray writes:
>  > I can understand the structure Glen found in Applemail:
>  > a series of text/plain parts interspersed with image/jpg, with all parts
>  > after the first being marked 'Contentent-Disposition: inline'.  Any MUA
>  > that can display text and images *ought* to handle that correctly and
>  > produce the expected result.  But that isn't what your structure above
>  > would produce.  If you did:
>  > 
>  >     multipart/related
>  >         multipart/alternative
>  >             text/html
>  >             text/plain
>  >         image/png
>  >         text/plain
>  >         image/png
>  >         text/plain
>  > 
>  > and only referred to the png parts in the text/html part and marked all
>  > the parts as 'inline' (even though that is irrelevant in the text/html
>  > related case), an MUA that *knew* about this technique *could* display it
>  > "correctly", but an MUA that is just following the standards most
>  > likely won't.
> 
> OK, I see that now.  It requires non-MIME information about the
> treatment of the root entity by the implementation.  On the other
> hand, it shouldn't *hurt*.  RFC 2387 explicitly specifies that at
> least some parts of a contained multipart/related part should be able
> to refer to entities related via the containing multipart/related.
> Since it does not mention *any* restrictions on contained root
> entities, I take it that it implicitly specifies that any contained
> multipart may make such references.  But I suspect it's not
> implemented by most MUAs.  I'll have to test.

OK, I see what you are driving at now.  Whether or not it works is
dependent on whether or not typical MUAs handle a multipart/related with
a text/plain root part by treating it as if it were a multipart/mixed
with inline or attachment sub-parts.  So yes, whether or not we should
support and/or document this technique very much depends on whether or
not typical MUAs do so.  I will, needless to say, be very interested in
the results of your research :)

--David