[Wylug-discuss] Linspire

[Aaron Crane]

Smylers writes:
> I'm beginning to have some thoughts on 'Lycos email' too.  I admit that
> HTML messages have their uses, but taking a purely textual message with
> no formatting in it whatsoever, wrapping it up in all of that gunk (some
> of which isn't even used for anything), and then attaching a plain text
> "alternative" part but leaving the plain text content empty is just
> ridiculous!

Actually, there was no alternative part in that message.  It looks to me
like the plain text came not from Lycos, but from the Mailman that runs
the Wylug lists.  The message had a MIME structure like this:

  multipart/mixed (meaning "the body parts are independent and need to
  be bundled in a particular order", according to RFC 2046), containing:
      text/html (the actual message)
      text/plain (the Wylug footer)

I'm assuming that:

  - The message got to Mailman as just a single-part text/html message.
  
  - The Wylug Mailman is configured to always add an informational
    footer to messages.
  
  - That footer is plain text, so if a message arrives with no
    text/plain part, the existing part(s) are demoted to the first part
    of a multipart/mixed, with the footer in a text/plain that's the
    second part.

Of course, the fundamental problem here is that Lycos sends mails that
pointlessly contain HTML -- I think Mailman is doing the best it can in
the circumstances.

-- 
Aaron Crane