"Sean R. Lynch" <seanl@literati.org> wrote:

Ummm, Mutt *does* sent the message body as text/plain, and the content-type of the entire message is multipart/signed. Not sure what you're talking about here. The content-type of the signature is application/pgp-signature, which should just be ignored by MUAs that don't understand RFC2015.

That's assuming they recognize multipart/signed as containing parts that can be displayed. The entire problem is that Eudora et al. do not---multipart/signed is unrecognized, so the entire message is treated as unopenable and displayed as an attachment.

And I hope they never add your patch, because people who use broken MUAs need to suffer, because they're not playing nice with the rest of us.

I hope you don't mean this. I don't think there is a Windows MUA that supports RFC2015 at all---are you saying that all Windows users need to suffer? I don't like Windows, but lots of people just can't or don't want to handle anything else. And speaking of not playing nicely, what do you call "...people who use broken MUAs need to suffer..." ?

Thanks, but no thanks, I will *not* break my own MUA to help other people continue using their own broken MUAs. The Internet is based on standards, and it's been too long that we've been suffering for those who break the standards. Witness, for instance, all the pipes that are clogged with traffic from Windows boxes because they fast start too fast due to their broken implementations of PGP. I am *sick* and *tired* of people telling me that I'm somehow sending my messages as attachments when their content-disposition is inline making them *not* attachments and the accusors obviously don't have the first clue about MIME works.

Sorry, I'm just tired, and I want this crap to end. Tim May seems to think you "acknowledged that we were sending our messages as attachments" and now considers that carte blanche to filter out RFC2015 messages. He can do what he likes, but I am upset that he somehow now feels morally justified doing that due to your harmless little hack.

The Internet is based on _suggested_ standards such as RFC2015 (note its disposition---it's not an official standard). No one is forced to comply with them, and those who wish to communicate effectively do their best to use their software in such a way as to be able to do so. It is obvious that you have no wish for the majority of people to be able to read your mail, as you refuse to acknowledge that your messages are not in a format that people support. You hide behind RFC2015, saying "look, I'm following the standard. I must be right." The fact is, there's no "right." It comes down to what you're trying to accomplish. If you're interested in pissing people off and being ignored, then you're doing OK. Otherwise, you might consider backing down on this one. The only thing you're going to acheive is an inability to communicate with the majority of internet users. -- Riad Wahby rsw@mit.edu MIT VI-2/A 2002 5105