Gnus way of splitting attachments

Gnus way of splitting attachments

[Jérôme Marant]

Hi,

Does the way Gnus splits attachments belong to a standard?

Currently, when Gnus splits attachments, the first part
and the last part contain a MIME boundary, and parts
that are in between are described as "partial" and
probably encoded in base64 or something.

I tried to read those parts with another mailer but
it couldn't manage to do anything with them; this
is why I wonder if it is a standard.

Also, how do I unsplit them with Gnus?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

-- 
Jérôme Marant

http://marant.org
              

Re: Gnus way of splitting attachments

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

jmarant@nerim.net (Jérôme Marant) writes:

> Does the way Gnus splits attachments belong to a standard?

Gnus doesn't split attachments, so I'm not quite sure what you
mean...  (Unless you mean message/partial.)

> Currently, when Gnus splits attachments, the first part
> and the last part contain a MIME boundary, and parts
> that are in between are described as "partial" and
> probably encoded in base64 or something.

Could you give an example?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: Gnus way of splitting attachments

[Jérôme Marant]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
> that has been posted to gnus.ding as well.
>
> jmarant@nerim.net (Jérôme Marant) writes:
>
>> Does the way Gnus splits attachments belong to a standard?
>
> Gnus doesn't split attachments, so I'm not quite sure what you
> mean...  (Unless you mean message/partial.)

I think I mean message/partial. When the size of a given
attachment exceeds a given limit, Gnus proposes to split
the attachment (or rather the message).

>> Currently, when Gnus splits attachments, the first part
>> and the last part contain a MIME boundary, and parts
>> that are in between are described as "partial" and
>> probably encoded in base64 or something.
>
> Could you give an example?

Yes, sure. I sent to myself a debian package which is about 2.5 Megs.
Gnus split it into 3 parts.

Part 1/3: 

...
User-Agent: Gnus/5.090017 (Oort Gnus v0.17) Emacs/21.2 (gnu/linux)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="=-=-="

--=-=-=
Content-Type: application/x-debian-package
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=gnus_5.9.0016-3_all.deb
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

ITxhcmNoPgpkZWJpYW4tYmluYXJ5ICAgMTA0ODI4MDgyMCAgMCAgICAgMCAgICAgMTAwNjQ0ICA0
ICAgICAgICAgYAoyLjAKY29udHJvbC50YXIuZ3ogIDEwNDgyODA4MjAgIDAgICAgIDAgICAgIDEw
...

Part 2/3:

User-Agent: Gnus/5.090017 (Oort Gnus v0.17) Emacs/21.2 (gnu/linux)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: message/partial; id="<87u1d21piz.fsf@marant.org>"; number=2; total=3
X-Gnus-Mail-Source: directory:~/Mail/incoming/
Message-ID: <87r8861piz.fsf@marant.org>
Lines: 12988
Xref: chinon perso:662

BOdIUKDjMKSStdJ0dlNfgcC2SMPw6v/5aHr4+dG0W7kDlZTcGT4JQOCDRyM1ClDhNy3CfLLMzcz0
zt7s4Vhnh5/PE6NMVKi6eevz6AQkOklO5eEl7rN+iaaMxQb2L6tRVVCdOd5CAs/WJepxl+o3R1+a
...

Part 3/3:

...
User-Agent: Gnus/5.090017 (Oort Gnus v0.17) Emacs/21.2 (gnu/linux)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: message/partial; id="<87u1d21piz.fsf@marant.org>"; number=3; total=3
X-Gnus-Mail-Source: directory:~/Mail/incoming/
Message-ID: <87ptnq1piz.fsf@marant.org>
Lines: 7973
Xref: chinon perso:661

EuY7s4FRkR5SgztBu0XeiDrQNSdJ2qvyt8NG83qudA0isrdWTQeocnyVpaj3n6oOot4LhJgDru5+
B/fZ7CbEzOAq3TpvVJWbyc2Q2NtYO7bt/ksixsTdWgNE/n+kP1deIsAH+R5tmwGLquopxEAMd85R
...
7+5397v73f3ufne/u9/d7+5397v73f3ufne/u9/d7+5397v73f3ufne/u9/d7+5397v73f3ufne/
u9/d7+5397v73f3ufne/ud//D9A98VIAEG0A
--=-=-=
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
...


Thanks.

-- 
Jérôme Marant

http://marant.org

Re: Gnus way of splitting attachments

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

jmarant@nerim.net (Jérôme Marant) writes:

> I think I mean message/partial. When the size of a given
> attachment exceeds a given limit, Gnus proposes to split
> the attachment (or rather the message).

Right.  Then the answer is that Gnus does this according to the
standard, but not too many other mail readers follow this standard
(when reading mail).  Which is understandable, since it's both kinda
tricky to implement, and somewhat obscure.

Increase `message-send-mail-partially-limit' to have Gnus stop doing
this. 

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen