Re: [Evolution] Changing contents of attachments

[Russell Fulton <r fulton auckland ac nz>]

On Sat, 2004-11-20 at 07:59, Alex S Moore wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 13:17 -0500, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
> > -OR- you could not send attachments as text/plain when they aren't
> > text/plain
>
> Well, they are text/plain. 

The point about text files is that their format is platform dependent,
this is a well established principle and Evo is doing the right thing by
performing the translation.  If you don't want the MUA to change the
file then send them as binary.

The terminology dates back (at least) to the FTP protocol where the
distinction was made between text (i.e. line orientated files) that
should be translated into a standard form for transmission and binary
files that must be transmitted as is.  I am not familiar with the MIME
RFCs but I would be surprised if it does not defines a standard means of
encoding text files.  I.e. Evo has no way of knowing how the file was
originally encoded so you could not even have an option to preserve the
CRLF even if you wanted too.

I think the fundamental problem here is one of terminology.  In this
context "text" means "this is a line orientated file and should be
handled as such, i.e. line endings should be translated to local
platform" and "binary" means "this file has no system dependent features
i.e. transmit it as is".

Remember that *all* files are binary, text files are a subset of binary
files.

-- 
Russell Fulton, Information Security Officer, The University of Auckland
New Zealand