Re: MIME tests one and two results - Outlook Express

[Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr>]

François Pinard <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Karl Kleinpaste <karl@justresearch.com> writes:
> 
> > Default to a particular preference, sure; even default to not showing
> > a selector for other alternatives; but please don't deny the ability
> > even to learn that alternatives are available [...]
> 
> This is close to debugging, I think.

The trouble is that you can almost always say that, with the sentence
seemingly making sense.  But I believe that in this case we are
talking about more than mere difference in taste.  Not only do I want
to be able to choose between the alternatives, but I want to *know*
that what I'm getting is an alternative.

> > or to choose those alternatives on the fly as we examine a given
> > message, for those of us who want that ability.
> 
> Yes, Gnus should indeed offer some MIME debugging features.  Yet, by
> default, this should not become any encumbrance for the real thing.

Labeling ability to choose between the alternative parts as
``debugging'' to make it less appealing to our current implementor is
a dirty word trick.  Even rfc2046 allows the option of
user-interaction when selecting the alternative:

5.1.4.  Alternative Subtype

   The "multipart/alternative" type is syntactically identical to
   "multipart/mixed", but the semantics are different.  In particular,
   each of the body parts is an "alternative" version of the same
   information.

   Systems should recognize that the content of the various parts are
   interchangeable.  Systems should choose the "best" type based on the
   local environment and references, in some cases even through user
                                                                ^^^^
   interaction.  As with "multipart/mixed", the order of body parts is
   ^^^^^^^^^^^
   significant.  In this case, the alternatives appear in an order of
   increasing faithfulness to the original content.  In general, the

The "user-interaction" possibility can, of course, be understood
differently, but I think that what Gnus did up to recently was close
to the spirit of text -- choose what it thinks is best, and present
the rest of the options to the user.

If I receive HTML junk, and must press `K b' in order to check whether
there are perhaps some alternatives to the junk (because HTML looks
ugly in W3[1]), then something must be wrong.


[1]
With apologies to Bill Perry, who really does his best to make it not
suck.  IMHO current Emacs redisplay is simply not up to that task,
especially with tables in play.

-- 
Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> | Student at FER Zagreb, Croatia
--------------------------------+--------------------------------
You have an unusual magnetic personality.  Don't walk too close to
metal objects which are not fastened down.