forwarding as text rather than MIME?

forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Bill White]

Pterodactyl Gnus v0.76, GNU Emacs 20.3.1 (i586-unicent-linux-gnu, X
toolkit) of Thu Aug 20 1998 on banshee

In pgnus 0.76, mail forwarding now forwards a mime message rather than
text. It would be nice if the forward functions could be customized to
give the user a choice of which format to use.

Thanks -

bw
-- 
Bill White . billw@wolfram.com . http://www.wolfram.com/~billw

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Hans de Graaff]

Bill White <billw@wolfram.com> writes:

> In pgnus 0.76, mail forwarding now forwards a mime message rather
> than text. It would be nice if the forward functions could be
> customized to give the user a choice of which format to use.

Ha, so that is why things are broken now. I forwarded some messages
yesterday to my work address, where I (need to) use Outlook
98. Outlook could not read the messages, and when pressed offered me
to view the raw text of the message in Notepad. I'll dig up the exact
messages tomorrow at work.

Hans

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Hans de Graaff <graaff@xs4all.nl> writes:

> Ha, so that is why things are broken now. I forwarded some messages
> yesterday to my work address, where I (need to) use Outlook
> 98. Outlook could not read the messages, and when pressed offered me
> to view the raw text of the message in Notepad. I'll dig up the exact
> messages tomorrow at work.

Please do.

The suckiness of MIME implementations around the world continue to
stagger me.

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

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Hans de Graaff]

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

> > Ha, so that is why things are broken now. I forwarded some messages
> > yesterday to my work address, where I (need to) use Outlook
> > 98. Outlook could not read the messages, and when pressed offered me
> > to view the raw text of the message in Notepad. I'll dig up the exact
> > messages tomorrow at work.
> 
> The suckiness of MIME implementations around the world continue to
> stagger me.

The plot thickens, because some messages I forwarded yesterday (using
the MIME stuff) did come out just fine in Outlook. So it does appear
to be related to particulars of the messages. Of course, Outlook makes 
debugging this quite hard because you can't get at the raw text of the 
message, so comparing a failed and a succeeded message is a
problem. However, I should be able to get some more details if I
retrieve the messages with fetchmail. I'll do that after the weekend.

Hans

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Chris Tessone]

>>>>> "Hans" == Hans de Graaff <graaff@xs4all.nl> writes:

    Hans> The plot thickens, because some messages I forwarded
    Hans> yesterday (using the MIME stuff) did come out just fine in
    Hans> Outlook. So it does appear to be related to particulars of
    Hans> the messages. Of course, Outlook makes debugging this quite
    Hans> hard because you can't get at the raw text of the message,
    Hans> so comparing a failed and a succeeded message is a
    Hans> problem. However, I should be able to get some more details
    Hans> if I retrieve the messages with fetchmail. I'll do that
    Hans> after the weekend.

MIME things are being strange...

Anyhow, when did it occur that Gnus forwards stuff as MIME instead of
just plain text (as God intended)? Did I miss an entire discussion
about that or did someone just slip it in?

-- 
Chris Tessone              tessone@imsa.edu              tessone@fnal.gov
IMSA PH/Postmaster SNPC                     http://www.imsa.edu/~tessone/
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Chris Tessone <tessone@fnal.gov> writes:

> Anyhow, when did it occur that Gnus forwards stuff as MIME instead of
> just plain text (as God intended)? Did I miss an entire discussion
> about that or did someone just slip it in?

There was no discussion, I think -- nobody protested much before I
wrote the thing, and now it's too late.  *bwa-ha-haaaaa*

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

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Chris Tessone]

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

    Lars> There was no discussion, I think -- nobody protested much
    Lars> before I wrote the thing, and now it's too late.
    Lars> *bwa-ha-haaaaa*

'Twould be nice if this were customizable. I like to edit out headers, 
etc., in messages I send.

-- 
Chris Tessone              tessone@imsa.edu              tessone@fnal.gov
IMSA PH/Postmaster SNPC                     http://www.imsa.edu/~tessone/
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Hrvoje Niksic]

Chris Tessone <tessone@fnal.gov> writes:

> >>>>> "Lars" == Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
> 
>     Lars> There was no discussion, I think -- nobody protested much
>     Lars> before I wrote the thing, and now it's too late.
>     Lars> *bwa-ha-haaaaa*
> 
> 'Twould be nice if this were customizable. I like to edit out
> headers, etc., in messages I send.

You will be able to do that in the next release -- Lars gave in that
much.  What you won't be able to do is forward messages the old,
pre-MIME, way.  Which is kinda sad, but I guess we'll get used to it.

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Toni Drabik]

Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:

> > 'Twould be nice if this were customizable. I like to edit out
> > headers, etc., in messages I send.
> 
> You will be able to do that in the next release -- Lars gave in that
> much.  What you won't be able to do is forward messages the old,
> pre-MIME, way.  Which is kinda sad, but I guess we'll get used to it.

I don't think so.  Forwarding messages the new, MIME way is OK when we 
talk about mail messages.  But, what's with post forwards?  Currently, 
`gnus-summary-post-forward' forwards selected post as a MIME
attachment.  And, because attachments of any kind are considered rude
in non-binary newsgroups, that's *very* bad thing.

I'd like to be able to forward posts the old way.  Of course, I always 
can press `F' and change the `Newsgroups: ' header, but that's not a
solution...  Not a good one, at least.


-- 
Warning: This article may be fatal if swallowed.
Toni Drabik <tdrabik@public.srce.hr> * <URL:http//public.srce.hr/~tdrabik/>

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Hrvoje Niksic]

Toni Drabik <tdrabik@public.srce.hr> writes:

> Forwarding messages the new, MIME way is OK when we talk about mail
> messages.  But, what's with post forwards? [...]

Indeed, you are right.  I didn't think about that.

Lars, could you please *please* allow a way to revert to the old
forarding style?  Don't make me have to hurt you when we meet in
Japan.  :-)

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Robert Bihlmeyer]

Hi,

>>>>> On 22 Feb 1999 18:43:22 +0100
>>>>> Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> said:

 Hrvoje> Lars, could you please *please* allow a way to revert to the
 Hrvoje> old forarding style?

What was so good about the old style?

 Hrvoje> Don't make me have to hurt you when we meet in Japan. :-)

I hope you won't forget about us non-invented-ones and tape that
fight.

	Robbe

-- 
Robert Bihlmeyer	reads: Deutsch, English, MIME, Latin-1, NO SPAM!
<robbe@orcus.priv.at>	<http://stud2.tuwien.ac.at/~e9426626/sig.html>

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Hrvoje Niksic]

Robert Bihlmeyer <e9426626@stud2.tuwien.ac.at> writes:

> >>>>> On 22 Feb 1999 18:43:22 +0100
> >>>>> Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> said:
> 
>  Hrvoje> Lars, could you please *please* allow a way to revert to the
>  Hrvoje> old forarding style?
> 
> What was so good about the old style?

It didn't use MIME.  MIME is frowned upon in most news hierarchies.
Toni summed it up pretty well.

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Aaron M. Ucko]

Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:

> You will be able to do that in the next release -- Lars gave in that
> much.  What you won't be able to do is forward messages the old,
> pre-MIME, way.  Which is kinda sad, but I guess we'll get used to it.

Editing out the MML tags should work, no?

-- 
Aaron M. Ucko, KB1CJC <amu@mit.edu> (finger amu@monk.mit.edu)

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Per Abrahamsen]

Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:

> It didn't use MIME.  MIME is frowned upon in most news hierarchies.
> Toni summed it up pretty well.

*Unreadable* MIME is frowned upon.  I don't think message/rfc822 is
particularily unreadable.

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Robert Bihlmeyer]

Hi,

>>>>> On 23 Feb 1999 19:32:21 +0100
>>>>> Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> said:

 Per> Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:
 >> It didn't use MIME. MIME is frowned upon in most news hierarchies.
 >> Toni summed it up pretty well.

 Per> *Unreadable* MIME is frowned upon. I don't think message/rfc822
 Per> is particularily unreadable.

Indeed. In the hierarchy I am most active in you get frowned/flamed at 
for HTML-multiparts or similar stuff. I never saw a complaint about
message/rfc822 parts or multipart/signed articles.

IMHO most neat would be a kind of compromise: make the MIME forward
almost indifferent to a "normal" forward, by setting the
part-delimiter to "----cut-here----" and similar things.

	Robbe

-- 
Robert Bihlmeyer	reads: Deutsch, English, MIME, Latin-1, NO SPAM!
<robbe@orcus.priv.at>	<http://stud2.tuwien.ac.at/~e9426626/sig.html>

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Hrvoje Niksic]

Robert Bihlmeyer <e9426626@stud2.tuwien.ac.at> writes:

> IMHO most neat would be a kind of compromise: make the MIME forward
> almost indifferent to a "normal" forward, by setting the
> part-delimiter to "----cut-here----" and similar things.

The delimiter is not the problem; current funny -=-=-=- stuff is not
any uglier than ----cut-here----.  The problem is that:

1) Up to now, you could use `S o p' to create and send purely textual
   messages, suitable for forwarding as well as for "silly" purposes
   such as *.best-of-usenet newsgroups.  The MIME wonder doesn't allow 
   you to do this.

2) Many newsreaders don't handle MIME at all.  This, for one, includes
   all stable releases of Gnus.  Then you get the raw message with not
   only the delimiters, but all the headers, plus the MIME headers.
   The old forwarding routine created much shorter and more readable
   messages.

3) Many newsreaders handle MIME but poorly.  They insist on calling
   "metamail", which is a pain in the $@#$@# for many reasons (I can
   expand on this in a different message).

4) I'm not sure why it's such a good idea to use MIME encapsulation
   for news messages anyway.

All of this doesn't matter to me very much; as I said in an earlier
message, I will likely adapt to Gnus' final design choice.  It's just
that I also see Toni's point in questionning the wisdom of using MIME
for news forwards.

[Not to mention that even the current Gnus handles message/rfc822 very 
poorly.  The only sane way of viewing such messages is through *gasp*
nndoc.]

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Chris Tessone]

I'm still not even clear on why forwarding mail messages (much less
news posts) as MIME is even advantagous. If people *really* want to,
why is a text-only option not being offered to those who don't want to 
forward as MIME?

-- 
Chris Tessone              tessone@imsa.edu              tessone@fnal.gov
IMSA PH/Postmaster SNPC                     http://www.imsa.edu/~tessone/
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Feb 24, 1999, Chris Tessone <tessone@fnal.gov> wrote:

> I'm still not even clear on why forwarding mail messages (much less
> news posts) as MIME is even advantagous.

MIME messages *must* be forwarded as MIME, otherwise the MIME
structure is lost forever, and the message becomes mostly useless.
Only non-MIME messages could be forwarded with the old style without
loss of contents.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva aoliva@{acm.org,computer.org}
oliva@{dcc.unicamp.br,gnu.org,egcs.cygnus.com,samba.org}
Instituto de Computação, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, SP, Brasil

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Chris Tessone]

>>>>> "Alexandre" == Alexandre Oliva <oliva@dcc.unicamp.br> writes:

    Alexandre> MIME messages *must* be forwarded as MIME, otherwise
    Alexandre> the MIME structure is lost forever, and the message
    Alexandre> becomes mostly useless.  Only non-MIME messages could
    Alexandre> be forwarded with the old style without loss of
    Alexandre> contents.

Yes, I understand that. However, we're not discussing that. We're
discussing forwarding plain-text messages using MIME as message/rfc822 
instead of in the message body.

-- 
Chris Tessone              tessone@imsa.edu              tessone@fnal.gov
IMSA PH/Postmaster SNPC                     http://www.imsa.edu/~tessone/
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Kai.Grossjohann]

Alexandre Oliva <oliva@dcc.unicamp.br> writes:

  > MIME messages *must* be forwarded as MIME, otherwise the MIME
  > structure is lost forever, and the message becomes mostly useless.
  > Only non-MIME messages could be forwarded with the old style without
  > loss of contents.

Hm?  As long as the MIME message doesn't contain the footer used for
forwarded messages, I don't see the problem.  Let's say the header is
"@" on a line by itself and the footer also.  Then everything between
the two "@" lines is a MIME message, and saving that stuff to a file
produces a MIME message.  Where's the problem?

kai
-- 
I like _\bb_\bo_\bt_\bh kinds of music.

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Robert Bihlmeyer]

Hi,

>>>>> On Wed, 24 Feb 1999 10:30:39 -0600
>>>>> Chris Tessone <tessone@fnal.gov> said:

 Chris> I'm still not even clear on why forwarding mail messages (much
 Chris> less news posts) as MIME is even advantagous.

Because in the ideal case where the receing MUA also handles MIME
properly, the original (and only that) can be extracted automatically.
For old style forwards you'd have to rely on heuristics.

Granted that the MIME forwards are somewhat uglier when viewed in
non-MIME-aware readers.

	Robbe

-- 
Robert Bihlmeyer	reads: Deutsch, English, MIME, Latin-1, NO SPAM!
<robbe@orcus.priv.at>	<http://stud2.tuwien.ac.at/~e9426626/sig.html>

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Russ Allbery]

Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:
> Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:

>> It didn't use MIME.  MIME is frowned upon in most news hierarchies.
>> Toni summed it up pretty well.

> *Unreadable* MIME is frowned upon.  I don't think message/rfc822 is
> particularily unreadable.

Not that this is most hierarchies, but as for one particular fairly small
hierarchy, <URL:http://www.usenet2.org/rules.txt> says:

| No binaries: "Usenet is Text"
| -----------------------------
| 
| This isn't 1985. There are plenty of ways to exchange images and
| software without hiding them in text.
| 
| No subhierarchy can allow posts of binaries. If necessary, a separate
| "bin.*" hierarchy will be created for this purpose.
| 
| HTML and other verbose rich text formats are binaries. The only allowed
| MIME types are: none (in which case the message must be in ISO8859.1,
| since there must be a default and that's one that'll cover most of the
| likely traffic), or:
| 
|         MIME-Version: 1.0
|         Content-Type: text/plain; charset=<any>  OR  multipart/signed
|         Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit  OR  7bit
| 
| If the Content-type is multipart/signed, then the parts may be:
| 
|         Content-Type: text/plain
|         Content-Type: application/pgp-signature

At the time we wrote this, there was full justification for being this
strict (and some similar policies are reflected in Cleannews filters and
other similar places).  Nowadays, I think it would probably be worth
letting up on that to a large degree, but in the meantime I know there are
lots of other moderated groups and smaller hierarchies that have set up
similar policies.  A way to revert to the old forwarding method is really
necessary for those places for at least a little longer.

Remember, MIME implementations have sucked so hard to date that everyone's
still in shell shock from them and there are a lot of engrained reflex
reactions.  It's going to take a year or two of available non-sucking MIME
implementations before this will change.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)         <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Kai.Grossjohann]

lconrad@world.std.com (Laura E Conrad) writes:

  > [...]  So I've stopped using it, and written my own "sign-mail"
  > command.  (I'm sure there's something I could use in gnus
  > somewhere; it seemed easier to write it than to find it.)

Set the TM variable for using signatures to nil, and set
message-signature to the string to be used as a signature.  Or set it
to t, this will use the file message-signature-file, by default
~/.signature. 

kai
-- 
I like _\bb_\bo_\bt_\bh kinds of music.

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:

> > Forwarding messages the new, MIME way is OK when we talk about mail
> > messages.  But, what's with post forwards? [...]
> 
> Indeed, you are right.  I didn't think about that.

I didn't either.  Hm.

> Lars, could you please *please* allow a way to revert to the old
> forarding style?  Don't make me have to hurt you when we meet in
> Japan.  :-)

:-)

Ok, there are many things to consider here.  I'll try to enumerate
them, because I like enumerated lists, and the auto-indent thing is
neat.

1) Forwarding things as message/rfc822 allows automatic extraction by
   MIME-compliant news/mail readers.

2) A typical complaint when forwarding using the old scheme was that
   not all headers were included, which meant that when people
   forwarded things to complain about spam, none of the important
   headers (Path/Received/etc) were included.

3) A typical complaint when forwarding message/rfc822 messages is that 
   all the headers are included, which means that when people forward
   mail to each other, they get a bunch of useless headers
   (Path/Received/etc) they have to scroll through (if their
   news/maill reader don't handle that).

4) Some news hierarchies frown/autocancel some MIME types, but I
   haven't heard anyone autocancelling multiparts that only contain
   text/plain and message/rfc822.

5) MIME multiparts are generally somewhat noisier than traditional
   forward.  But if we drop the "multipart warning" ("If you are
   reading this..."), then the quantity of noise is actually less.
   Fix in Pterodactyl Gnus v0.78.

6) message/rfc822 is generally more robust than traditional forwards.
   If the recipient has real MIME, then you can be pretty sure that
   the recipient will be able to view the forwarded news/mail as
   was originally intended.  I don't think many mail/news readers
   are able to/will be able to do the same with traditional
   forwards.

To sum these considerations up, I think that message/rfc822 is the
right thing to do, and perhaps more importantly, it's The Thing Of The 
Future.  And I think that perhaps by pushing this, we might make the
future happen a bit sooner.

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

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Hrvoje Niksic]

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

> 1) Forwarding things as message/rfc822 allows automatic extraction by
>    MIME-compliant news/mail readers.

...and many news readers are not MIME compliant, Gnus <= 5.8.x
included.

> 2) A typical complaint when forwarding using the old scheme was that
>    not all headers were included, which meant that when people
>    forwarded things to complain about spam, none of the important
>    headers (Path/Received/etc) were included.
> 
> 3) A typical complaint when forwarding message/rfc822 messages is that 
>    all the headers are included, which means that when people forward
>    mail to each other, they get a bunch of useless headers
>    (Path/Received/etc) they have to scroll through (if their
>    news/maill reader don't handle that).

These two complaints were easily solved by `S o p' doing "nice"
forwards and `C-u S o p' doing "complete" forwards.  This worked
nicely.

> To sum these considerations up, I think that message/rfc822 is the
> right thing to do, and perhaps more importantly, it's The Thing Of
> The Future.  And I think that perhaps by pushing this, we might make
> the future happen a bit sooner.

Uh-oh.

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Per Abrahamsen]

Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:

> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
> 
> > 1) Forwarding things as message/rfc822 allows automatic extraction by
> >    MIME-compliant news/mail readers.
> 
> ...and many news readers are not MIME compliant, Gnus <= 5.8.x
> included.

I simply don't see the relevance of this.  MIME encapsulation is just
text.  Old newsreaders (including Gnus 5.7) can deal with text.

> These two complaints were easily solved by `S o p' doing "nice"
> forwards and `C-u S o p' doing "complete" forwards.  This worked
> nicely.

Yep, I think this would be a good idea.  The nice forwards could still
be MIME, with some headers filtered out.

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:

> > 1) Forwarding things as message/rfc822 allows automatic extraction by
> >    MIME-compliant news/mail readers.
> 
> ...and many news readers are not MIME compliant, Gnus <= 5.8.x
> included.

Yes, but a message/rfc822 multipart looks no uglier than a traditional 
forward.

> These two complaints were easily solved by `S o p' doing "nice"
> forwards and `C-u S o p' doing "complete" forwards.  This worked
> nicely.

Yes.  But people don't use the `C-u' command forms.

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

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Russ Allbery]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
> Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:

>>> 1) Forwarding things as message/rfc822 allows automatic extraction by
>>>    MIME-compliant news/mail readers.

>> ...and many news readers are not MIME compliant, Gnus <= 5.8.x
>> included.

> Yes, but a message/rfc822 multipart looks no uglier than a traditional
> forward.

Unless it's being read by someone who uses a newsreader that pipes
everything that it thinks is MIME through metamail.  Like, say, trn.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)         <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:

> > Yes, but a message/rfc822 multipart looks no uglier than a traditional
> > forward.
> 
> Unless it's being read by someone who uses a newsreader that pipes
> everything that it thinks is MIME through metamail.  Like, say, trn.

Oh, ick.

Hm.

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

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Hrvoje Niksic]

Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:

> > Yes, but a message/rfc822 multipart looks no uglier than a traditional
> > forward.
> 
> Unless it's being read by someone who uses a newsreader that pipes
> everything that it thinks is MIME through metamail.  Like, say, trn.

Yup.  That was one of my points in a previous message.  Many
newsreaders "implement" MIME by piping invoking metamail.

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Per Abrahamsen]

Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:

> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
> > Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:
> 
> >>> 1) Forwarding things as message/rfc822 allows automatic extraction by
> >>>    MIME-compliant news/mail readers.
> 
> >> ...and many news readers are not MIME compliant, Gnus <= 5.8.x
> >> included.
> 
> > Yes, but a message/rfc822 multipart looks no uglier than a traditional
> > forward.
> 
> Unless it's being read by someone who uses a newsreader that pipes
> everything that it thinks is MIME through metamail.  Like, say, trn.

I just tried it, metamail stripped the mime boundaries and the
"boring" headers.  This should be ok in most cases, as long as the
newsreader also allows you to see the "raw" message.  I'd be very
surprised if trn doesn't allow that.

Re: forwarding as text rather than MIME?

[Hans de Graaff]

Hans de Graaff <graaff@xs4all.nl> writes:

> > > Ha, so that is why things are broken now. I forwarded some messages
> > > yesterday to my work address, where I (need to) use Outlook
> > > 98. Outlook could not read the messages, and when pressed offered me
> > > to view the raw text of the message in Notepad. I'll dig up the exact
> > > messages tomorrow at work.

Well, whatever happened the last weeks I don't know, but all of the
messages I've been forwarding over the last week (with pGnus 0.80)
have worked fine in Outlook, so it looks like this has been fixed.

Hans