MIME acceptance test--where's the break-even point?

[L. McCarthy]

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If you can't beat `em, join `em -- hence I wade into the fray....

Amanda Walker writes:
>To: cypherpunks at toad.com
>Subject: MIME acceptance test--where's the break-even point?
>Content-Disposition: Inline
>
>
>This message contains 'text/enriched'-format data.
>Do you want to view it using the 'cat' command (y/n) [y] ?

Yeah, I'm sure that'll help a lot....

[...]
> This message, for example, is formatted as <fixed>text/enriched</
> fixed> instead of <fixed>text/plain</fixed>.  It's still readable on 
> 80-column <smaller>ASCII</smaller> terminals.  It's got some extra 
> stuff, but so does every <smaller>PGP</smaller>-signed message, or 
> worse yet a <smaller>PEM</smaller>-signed message, and I would argue 
> that the <smaller>MIME</smaller> formatting itself is no more 
> objectionable than these, just as I would argue that <fixed>base64</
> fixed> encoding (the format that graphics generally appear in when 
> <smaller>MIME</smaller> encapsulated)

BTW, is that what that piece of obscura from Peter Cassidy the other day was 
supposed to be ?

> is no more objectionable than 
> other mechanisms that serve the same purpose, such as <smaller>PGP</
> smaller> "<smaller>ASCII</smaller> armor", uuencoding, etc.
[...]
> Do you find this message to be "out of bounds" the way you found 
> my (intentionally excessive) <smaller>GIF</smaller> signature from a 
> while back to be?

Yes and no. The .GIF you sent before caused my copy of elm to dump core,
which was disconcerting but easy to remedy. I doubted that the picture you'd
sent was worth viewing, so I didn't bother trying to view it with xv on my
own. This message didn't prompt any error messages from elm, but it was a
nightmare to read, thanks to the plethora of angle-bracketed font instructions
embedded throughout the text. 

> If so, where's the boundary between this message and 
> the innumerable <smaller>PGP</smaller> formatted messages we see come by 
> on this list?

The PGP-formatted messages don't cause my mailer to dump core, and don't
have any embedded command sequences in their bodies, so I don't go cross-eyed
trying to read them. That's a pretty clear line for me. YMMV.

> How far are we willing to inconvenience the least common denominator 
> in order to provide the services we want (whether those services 
> be authentication & encryption, multimedia content, or anything 
> else)?  Where to the cost and benefit curves cross?

Actually, I wish you'd send a full test suite of MIME messages to the list, so
I could compile a comprehensive list of the things I have to ask the tech
support people here to fix. My copy of elm proclaims itself to be MIME-aware
but hasn't done very well in practice. Another GIF enclosure would be handy, 
because I didn't keep the previous one.

- - -L. Futplex McCarthy

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