RE: Mime part viewers, support for PGP, ICS files and others

[<Dirk-Jan Binnema nokia com>]

Hi Philip, 

>-----Original Message-----
>From: tinymail-devel-list-bounces gnome org 
>[mailto:tinymail-devel-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of 
>ext Philip Van Hoof
>Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 22:05
>To: tinymail-devel-list gnome org
>Cc: me pczone be
>Subject: Re: Mime part viewers, support for PGP, ICS files and others

>> I'm planning to quote design unquote the support for various 
>> mime-parts, in the tinymail framework, using a "MimePartView" type. 
>> This will be a type that plays a view in a MVC (model view 
>controller) 
>> story. The model being the mime-part instance, the view 
>being the new 
>> type. The controller being whatever component you'll put in between 
>> for both adapting the model and using it from the view.
>> 
>> Examples of mime-part-views will be:
>> 
>> o. a mime-part view that shows a normal mime-part being an 
>attachment. 
>> A file attachment like a .txt or a .png file.

[...]

I like the idea - it just seems the right thing to do. There are
some "real world imperfections" that should be addressed in the
design though:

- there won't be a nice 1:1 correspondence between MIME-type and
  viewer in all cases. 
	1) user preference (view pics inline or as attachment)
	2) wrong MIME-type (ie. application/octet-stream for just
         about any file-type when some versions of Outlook
         send it.
    	3) (less important) many MIME-types can be represented
          as a other types just for viewing; ie. many file types can
         be represented as images (inkscape, thumbnails of jpg,
         pdf, video etc.)

So I guess it would be good to have a way for the model to provide
the MIME-type, which is a function of the explicit MIME-type of
the MIME-part, user preference, and some 'special code' to make
intelligent decisions. Also, in the view there should be a way
to apply user preferences.

Best wishes,
Dirk.