Re: [Evolution] Opening pdf attachments

[Matthew Barnes <mbarnes redhat com>]

On Wed, 2009-12-16 at 10:21 +0000, Pete Biggs wrote:
> The message mime structure is constructed by the application that
> creates the message - it is at that point that the relationship between
> the attachment type and "Content-type:" header is determined. Clearly
> in your case the originating mailer can determine what the first
> attachment is, but fails to determine what the second one is
> ("application/octet-stream" is a generic default mime type that
> basically just means "data of some form").
>
> You should also be aware that the ".pdf" extension is not important -
> using extensions to determine file type is something that was invented
> by Microsoft in the DOS days - it is meaningless elsewhere and only
> used by humans as a reminder what a file contains rather than the
> computer as a determinant of the file type.

In the case of "application/octet-stream" we do fall back to attempting
to guess the real Content-Type from the filename (if present).  This all
relies on platform-level libraries and the shared MIME database -- same
as what Nautilus uses.  There's very little Evolution-specific code at
work here.

Anyway, this discussion is mostly moot because, as Akhil pointed out,
the issue the O.P. was asking about has been fixed for nearly a year.

Matthew Barnes