Re: Disable mailcap support

[Reiner Steib <4.uce.03.r.s@nurfuerspam.de>]

On Mon, Sep 29 2003, Jesper Harder wrote:

> Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes:
[...]
>> xdvi can invoke Netscape or Mozilla, the libraries don't do _that_. 8-)
>>
>> But I see your point.
>
> I'm not sure I understand your point about mailcap.  Could you
> explain it a bit more?
>
> I'd have thought disabling mailcap is less safe.  When you launch an
> attachment through mailcap an attempt is made to use a safe viewer
> with the safest options -- this isn't the case if you save it to disk
> and launch it in a different way (command line or double-clicking).

I have installed a possibility to disable external viewers as
suggested in the initial posting in this thread.  The default behavior
is _unchanged_, unless the user customizes `mm-enable-external'.  I
took over a part Jesper's text into the manual:

,----[ (info "(emacs-mime)Display Customization") ]
| `mm-enable-external'
|      Indicate whether external MIME handlers should be used.
| 
|      If `t', all defined external MIME handlers are used.  If `nil',
|      files are saved to disk (`mailcap-save-binary-file').  If it is
|      the symbol `ask', you are prompted before the external MIME
|      handler is invoked.
| 
|      When you launch an attachment through mailcap (*note mailcap::) an
|      attempt is made to use a safe viewer with the safest options-this
|      isn't the case if you save it to disk and launch it in a different
|      way (command line or double-clicking).  Anyhow, if you want to be
|      sure not to launch any external programs, set this variable to
|      `nil' or `ask'.
`----

I hope this is okay for everyone.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo--- PGP key available via WWW   http://rsteib.home.pages.de/