Re: Gnus and Emacs 20.3 and MIME

[Kees de Bruin <kees_de_bruin@tasking.com>]

Hrvoje Niksic writes:

> Kees de Bruin <kees_de_bruin@tasking.com> writes:
> 
> > I only hear people talking about TM for handling MIME, but what
> > about the way MIME is handled in VM. Mainly because of the full
> > integration of the MIME support in VM, the user doesn't have to
> > configure anything at all and it still works as expected.
> 
> True.  I would recommend to Lars to look at VM's MIME support and see
> if he likes that.  Implementing something similar (at least at the UI
> level) would be a *very* good start.

In a private discussion with Steinar Bang I promised to post a list of MIME
functions the VM mail reader supports. The VM mail reader has support for
MIME since version 6.xx and, as far as I know, in the current version of VM
(6.61) the following MIME capabilities are present (or at least used by
me):

MIME encoding:

- Attachments are possible with whatever encoding the user wants. Also,
  based on the extension of the file, VM can guess the correct encoding to
  use. No mailcap/mimetypes support.

- Encoding can be done using internal ELisp functions, or via external
  programs.

- Sending multiple messages as a single MIME digest.

MIME decoding:

- The user can configure what MIME types should be displayed inline
  (meaning that it is either displayed in a buffer or directly via an
  external program).

- For non-inline MIME types buttons are generated the user can use to save
  the MIME part to a file, or open it in some external viewer.

- Alternative display of MIME messages: plain text (no conversions), using
  inline display, or all buttons.

- Handling of multipart messages (am I correct here, I never tried this).

- Decoding can be done using internal ELisp functions, or via external
  programs.

- Handling of MIME digests.

I have probably missed some other MIME functions, but the above are the
things I use regularly. If there are other that use VM maybe they can
update the above list.

Greetings,

-- 
Kees de Bruin                                             Software Engineer
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail:  kees_de_bruin@tasking.com                      Tasking Software BV
Voice:   +31-33-455 85 84                               Plotterweg 31
Fax:     +31-33-455 00 03                               3821 BB  Amersfoort
WWW:     http://www.tasking.com                         The Netherlands
--[ In memory, everything seems to happen to music -- Tennessee Williams ]-