Re: MML multipart tag -- what does it do?

[Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>]

Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes:

> Personally, I consider the '<#!part sign=pgpmime>' stuff a completely
> broken design.  IMHO, MML should as closely as possible match the MIME
> structure of a message.  I still don't know why the initial proposal
> for something like this:
> 
>    <#multipart type=signed>
>    <#part>
>    This is a signed multipart.
>    </#part>
>    <#part type="text/plain" filename="~/file2"
>      disposition=attachment description="signed attachment">
>    <#/part>
>    <#/multipart>
> 
> was superseded by this odd construct.

This requires users to know how the sign/encrypt mechanism they use
are implemented in MIME.  E.g., if you want to sign using PGP/MIME you
must write the above, if you want to encrypt with S/MIME you need to
write something completely different because S/MIME encryption doesn't
use RFC 1847.  Maybe users shouldn't need to know that.

To me it feels more user friendly that you specify that a certain part
should be signed/encrypted in the definition of that part.  OTOH users
probably never need this level of fine control anyway, they want the
whole message signed or encrypted.

OTTH I agree it's a step away from having the MML structure closely
match the MIME structure, and that might be bad.  But Gnus already
creates MIME parts implicitely (by leaving out a top-level
<multipart>, or simply using two different and non-unifiable character
sets in one part) so the rule is already broken, and I think it's for
the better.

Btw, the following works:

<multipart sign=smime>
<part>
This is a signed multipart
<part filename=~/file2 description="signed attachment">
</multipart>