Re: Amazon no longer recognizes attachments...

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

>>>>>> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>:
>
>> I don't think Message mode has changed anything substantial recently, so
>> I'm assuming it's just Amazon having adjusted how they parse incoming
>> emails.
>
>> Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone have any ideas on how we
>> could make message attachments more "attachment-y"?
>
> If you know what works for sending an attachment to kindle, you could
> try sending a message to yourself and examine the attachment headers of
> a Gnus created message with the one that works.
>
> On a side note: I suggest trying out calibre for managing non-amazon
> ebooks on your kindle.

Huh, I may have figured this out. The problem might have been that I
didn't include any text in the message body, only the attachment. With
no text in the message body, Message mode produces this:

Return-Path: <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>
From: Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>
To: Eric Abrahamsen <girzel@kindle.com>
Subject: test
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2015 17:09:19 +0800
User-Agent: Gnus/5.130014 (Ma Gnus v0.14) Emacs/25.0.50 (gnu/linux)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/rtf
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=test.rtf
X-TUID: JzwQKAkDYpEH

{\rtf1\ansi\deff3\adeflang1025
... RTF file elided ...
This is only a test}
\par }


While Apple Mail, sending the same file, also with no body text,
produces:

From: someone else's address
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
	boundary="Apple-Mail=_B94D16E3-387D-4897-88E8-40D79B80879C"
Subject: test
To: girzel@kindle.com
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 8.2 \(2102\))


--Apple-Mail=_B94D16E3-387D-4897-88E8-40D79B80879C
Content-Disposition: attachment;
	filename=test.rtf
Content-Type: text/rtf;
	name="test.rtf"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

{\rtf1\ansi\deff3\adeflang1025
... RTF file elided ...
This is only a test}
\par }
--Apple-Mail=_B94D16E3-387D-4897-88E8-40D79B80879C--


If I put text in the message body, then Message mode also sets
Content-Type to multipart/mixed, with the MIME boundaries, and the
attachment is recognized.

I don't know what the "correct" thing to do is, but at least it looks
like I'm able to work around this pretty easily!

Hope this is somehow, at some time, useful to someone.

Eric