extra .ATT attachments?

extra .ATT attachments?

[Jaap-Henk Hoepman]

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When I send mail with attachments to people using MS Outlook, they see an extra
attachment <blurp>.ATT included in the file. They cannot open this file, and
this causes quite some confusion. Apparently its my signature that is contained 
in this attachment (as it does not show up in elsewhere in their message pane).

What is the problem and how can it be solved?

I've included a message-as-textfile example as attachment.


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X-From-Line: nobody Mon Sep 13 14:46:59 1999
To: es_secr@cs.utwente.nl
Subject: ["Edward Stempel" <e.stempel@crypto.philips.com>] Re: afstudeerbegeleiding
From: Jaap-Henk Hoepman <hoepman@cs.utwente.nl>
X-Face: #U;T;~,y.iVz7!wB(gVzSj:j}x-tZr\v-PQU}''7h^>jaAM'vw1K<p|LRd`F\Hha#IBb^,8
 nd6s}"Sj!:V'Y,LkwBj>A83N5/gN~kcktG%,>Q>""S?Fg`&U80!Vg=)El,s/W)W^
Sender: hoepman@cs.utwente.nl
Organization: University of Twente, Department of Computer Science
Date: 13 Sep 1999 14:46:59 +0200
Message-ID: <kplnabkmgs.fsf@utip376.cs.utwente.nl>
User-Agent: Gnus/5.070096 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.96) XEmacs/21.1 (20 Minutes to Nikko)
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--=-=-=


Hoi Paula,

Hierbij Edward's adres (en die van zijn interne begeleiders) bij 
Philips Crypto.

Jaap-Henk



--=-=-=
Content-Type: message/rfc822
Content-Disposition: inline

From: "Edward Stempel" <e.stempel@crypto.philips.com>
To: Jaap-Henk Hoepman <hoepman@cs.utwente.nl>
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 14:21:55 +0100
Subject: Re: afstudeerbegeleiding

Hallo Jaap-Henk,

Krijg ik dan ook een exemplaar?

Het postadres bij Philips Crypto is:

Philips Crypto B.V.
De Witbogt 2
Building BAH
P.O. Box 218
5600 MD  Eindhoven
The Netherlands

Telefoon (voor ons allemaal) 040-2722600

mvg,

Edward Stempel




--=-=-=


-- 
Jaap-Henk Hoepman             | Come sail your ships around me
Dept. of Computer Science     | And burn these bridges down
University of Twente          |       Nick Cave - "Ship Song"
Email: hoepman@cs.utwente.nl === WWW: www.cs.utwente.nl/~hoepman
Phone: +31 53 4893795 === Secr: +31 53 4893770 === Fax: +31 53 4894590
PGP ID: 0xF52E26DD  Fingerprint: 1AED DDEB C7F1 DBB3  0556 4732 4217 ABEF

--=-=-=--


[-- Attachment #3: Type: text/plain, Size: 401 bytes --]



-- 
Jaap-Henk Hoepman             | Come sail your ships around me
Dept. of Computer Science     | And burn these bridges down
University of Twente          |       Nick Cave - "Ship Song"
Email: hoepman@cs.utwente.nl === WWW: www.cs.utwente.nl/~hoepman
Phone: +31 53 4893795 === Secr: +31 53 4893770 === Fax: +31 53 4894590
PGP ID: 0xF52E26DD  Fingerprint: 1AED DDEB C7F1 DBB3  0556 4732 4217 ABEF

Re: extra .ATT attachments?

[Nathan Williams]

Jaap-Henk Hoepman <hoepman@cs.utwente.nl> writes:

> When I send mail with attachments to people using MS Outlook, they see an extra
> attachment <blurp>.ATT included in the file. They cannot open this file, and
> this causes quite some confusion. Apparently its my signature that is contained 
> in this attachment (as it does not show up in elsewhere in their message pane).
> 
> What is the problem and how can it be solved?

The problem is that the MML-processing stage ends the first text/plain
section at the directive for the attachment. Since the signature has
already been inserted, this is typically where you've finished typing,
at the bottom of your message but above the signature. So the document
structure (send such a message to yourself and C-d it) is something
like:

text/plain (your real message)
foo/bar    (the attachment)
text/plain (your signature)

I tend to work around this problem by manually moving point after my
signature before inserting attachments, or in the case of forwarding
messages, to manually move my signature into the main body, rather
than after the included message. It hasn't annoyed me enough yet to
try to fix it for real, but I would propose that all text outside of
explicit MML tags be concatenated into the initial text/plain section.

        - Nathan

Re: extra .ATT attachments?

[Jack Vinson]

>>>>> "JH" == Jaap-Henk Hoepman <hoepman@cs.utwente.nl> writes:

JH> When I send mail with attachments to people using MS Outlook, they see
JH> an extra attachment <blurp>.ATT included in the file. They cannot open
JH> this file, and this causes quite some confusion. Apparently its my
JH> signature that is contained in this attachment (as it does not show up
JH> in elsewhere in their message pane).

JH> What is the problem and how can it be solved?

I have noticed this problem as well when sending myself binary files for
fun (to see how well Outlook worked).

The basic problem is that Outlook does not understand multipart messages.
It can deal happily with multiple attachments.  But any time you place text
after an attachment, you will get a *.ATT file.

I assume this has something to do with putting inlined text between
attachments.  Outlook seems to expect all attachments to be at the end of
the MIME message.  When there is extra stuff it gets confused.  I assume
the "correct" behavior is for it to treat the extra stuff as plain old
text.

-- 
Jack Vinson
Bart: I will not grease the monkey bars.

Re: extra .ATT attachments?

[Lee Willis]

Nathan Williams <nwilliams@primeon.com> writes:

> Jaap-Henk Hoepman <hoepman@cs.utwente.nl> writes:
> 
> > What is the problem and how can it be solved?
> 
> The problem is that the MML-processing stage ends the first text/plain
> section at the directive for the attachment.

No the problem is Outlook being broken!

> text/plain (your real message)
> foo/bar    (the attachment)
> text/plain (your signature)

Which is a perfectly valid MIME message (AFAIK)

But what if I want my message then an attachment then my signature?
Outlook should grok this. I s'pose I can see it's point from a common
sense point of view (ie "attachments" should go at the end) but since it
doesn't distinguish between "attachments" and "inline" MIME parts it's
broken!

Lee.
-- 
I was doing object-oriented assembly at 1 year old ...  
For some reason my mom insists on calling it "Playing with blocks"

Re: extra .ATT attachments?

[Nathan Williams]

Lee Willis <lee@gbdirect.co.uk> writes:

> > text/plain (your real message)
> > foo/bar    (the attachment)
> > text/plain (your signature)
> 
> Which is a perfectly valid MIME message (AFAIK)
> 
> But what if I want my message then an attachment then my signature?
> Outlook should grok this. I s'pose I can see it's point from a common
> sense point of view (ie "attachments" should go at the end) but since it
> doesn't distinguish between "attachments" and "inline" MIME parts it's
> broken!

Okay, I concede that you might want to have multiple inline
parts. MIME certainly allows it, and Outlook probably should have some
concept of inline parts vs. "attachments". 

However, I think that in the case that brought this up, it is expected
that the signature be part of the traditional message body. I consider
this really a user interface problem on the Gnus side - an unfortunate
collision of the properties of MML and signature handling.

        - Nathan

Re: extra .ATT attachments?

[Toby Speight]

JH> Jaap-Henk Hoepman <URL:mailto:hoepman@cs.utwente.nl>

0> In article <kpg10ftjaq.fsf@utip376.cs.utwente.nl>, JH wrote:

JH> When I send mail with attachments to people using MS Outlook, they
JH> see an extra attachment <blurp>.ATT included in the file. They cannot
JH> open this file, and this causes quite some confusion. Apparently its
JH> my signature that is contained in this attachment (as it does not
JH> show up in elsewhere in their message pane).
JH>
JH>
JH>
JH> --=-=-=
JH>
JH>
JH> --
JH> Jaap-Henk Hoepman             | Come sail your ships around me
JH> Dept. of Computer Science     | And burn these bridges down


Is Outlook assuming "Content-Disposition: attachment"?  Does it help
to explictly write "Content-Disposition: inline" after the multipart
separator?

Or maybe it's even more broken, and doesn't correctly default to
text/plain for unlabelled parts?

Re: extra .ATT attachments?

[Jody Klymak]

    JH> Jaap-Henk Hoepman <URL:mailto:hoepman@cs.utwente.nl>
    0> In article <kpg10ftjaq.fsf@utip376.cs.utwente.nl>, JH wrote:

    JH> When I send mail with attachments to people using MS Outlook,
    JH> they see an extra attachment <blurp>.ATT included in the
    JH> file. They cannot open this file, and this causes quite some
    JH> confusion. Apparently its my signature that is contained in
    JH> this attachment (as it does not show up in elsewhere in their
    JH> message pane).
    JH> 
    JH> 
    JH> 
    JH> --=-=-=
    JH> 
    JH> 
    JH> -- Jaap-Henk Hoepman | Come sail your ships around me Dept. of
    JH> Computer Science | And burn these bridges down

In the info file for message.el there is reference to a variable
message-before-forwarded-message.  However, setting this does not seem
to have any effect for me (nor was it defined by default).  So perhaps
I am looking at an old version of the info file.  But the
functionality seems to have been there to put the signature file in
the "right" place.  Is it gone now?  I've noticed this same problem,
and its a bit annoying.  

Thanks,  Jody

-- 
Jody Klymak                         APL/School of Oceanography,
Doctoral Candidate                  University of Washington
mailto:jklymak@apl.washington.edu   (206)-685-9080
http://www.ocean.washington.edu/people/grads/jklymak/

Re: extra .ATT attachments?

[Robert Bihlmeyer]

Hi,

>>>>> On 16 Sep 1999 11:40:27 -0400
>>>>> Nathan Williams <nwilliams@primeon.com> said:

 Nathan> However, I think that in the case that brought this up, it is
 Nathan> expected that the signature be part of the traditional
 Nathan> message body.

There is no "traditional message body" per se. It is a mime message
consisting of three parts. If MS Outhouse can't dig that, I don't
know.

I think of attachments being attached to a *specific*point* in the
message. I frequently write 

,-
| blabla
|
| Here's the new version of foo.pl
|
| [MML-code that attaches foo.pl]
|
| bar.pl is unchanged, but you'll need to install the new baz.pm, too:
|
| [MML-code that attaches baz.pm]
|
| blabla, signature, end
`-

I don't want my attachments moved around, I want them exactly where
they are.

One thing that has come up before is a simple "attach this to the
message" command. This one could tack the attachment onto the end of
the message, if we want this.

        Robbe

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

Re: extra .ATT attachments?

[David S. Goldberg]

It looks like the message info is out of date.  All those `forward'
variables are obsoleted by the MIME forwarding.  I complained about
this a while back but was apparently unconvincing.  In my case, a
message that I forwarded to someone had no signature on it so that the 
inlined message/rfc822 part appeared to the recipient as if I wrote it 
due to the placement of my sig in the forward (does that parse?)
Here's what it looked like:

headers
my intro text
the inlined message
my signature

with no visible separators (the recipient was using netscape; others
have told me this is user error on the part of the recipient who
should have noticed a font change or some such for the inlined
message; I never checked it out).  Anyway it appeared that my
signature was part of the forwarded message, which in this particular
case was not so much trouble, but it could be in others.  When ever I
forward a message now, I manually move my sig above the forwarded
message.  It probably wouldn't be too hard to do something with advice 
or maybe even one of the message hooks to automate this.
-- 
Dave Goldberg
Post: The Mitre Corporation\MS B325\202 Burlington Rd.\Bedford, MA 01730
Phone: 781-271-3887
Email: dsg@mitre.org

Re: extra .ATT attachments?

[Jack Vinson]

As a followup to everyone's griping about how Outlook does (not) work, I
just sent myself a simple message /from/ Outlook to an account which picks
up mail in gnus.

The message, as composed was
        text
        attachment
        text

The message, as received was
        text
        <<filename of attachment>>
        text
        attachment

Even if I pick up this message with nnimap, the attachment is inserted at
the end of the file.  As far as we are concerned, I think we all agree that
Outlook (and the MS Exchange server) is broken.

-- 
Jack Vinson
Bart: I will not bury the new kid.

Re: extra .ATT attachments?

[Kai Großjohann]

FWIW, I also want my signature to be before the forwarded message.
Especially if looking at messages with Gnus, the distinction between
the (inlined) message and the next part is not clear at all.
kai
-- 
I like BOTH kinds of music.

Re: extra .ATT attachments?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Nathan Williams <nwilliams@primeon.com> writes:

> However, I think that in the case that brought this up, it is expected
> that the signature be part of the traditional message body. I consider
> this really a user interface problem on the Gnus side - an unfortunate
> collision of the properties of MML and signature handling.

I don't think so.  It's probably more of a Windows/Unix culture mixup.
Windowsey mail reader are geared to creating messages that first have
all the text written by the sender, then the signature, then quoted
messages, attachments, and several virii.  Unixey mail readers have
quoted text interspersed with new text, and then the signature comes
last.  For a Unixey mail reader, it makes sense to put the
"attachment" before the signature, for a Windowsey mail reader, it
does not.

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