On Sat, 4 Oct 2008 08:15:06 -0700 Travis wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Chris Metzler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <pan-users@nongnu.org> > Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2008 05:24 AM > Subject: Re: [Pan-users] Re: clearing headers? > > > The body of your message came as an attachment so none of it is here in > my reply.
Wow, I haven't run into someone with this bug in a while. Well, I can't swear that the problem is yours; but based on years of history, I would bet cash that what's going on is this: My email was/is PGP-signed (I sign pretty much all my email), and by choice, my security system makes the PGP signature an attachment, rather than alphanumerically encoded and attached to the end of the email text (a so-called "inline signature"). Since the email will have attachments, that requires that the email be MIME-encoded; all email messages with attachments are MIME-encoded. Under the MIME standard, the email is broken up into parts -- one part for the text, one part for each attachment, etc. The portion comprising the text goes into its own component of the MIME-encoded message, with headers indicating that it's text, to be handled differently from the other (attachment) portions of the message. The MIME standard is what makes possible sending attachments/binary files/etc. as part of email messages. It's been an email encoding standard since 1996 (well, doing it has been around longer than that; but it became an IETF standard starting in 1996). However, certain Microsoft products have had a series of really famous bugs (you can google on them) in their handling of MIME-encoded email messages (specifically, their handling of the "Content-disposition:" header, or behavior in the absence of that header). Outlook used to have this problem as well, but they fixed it around 2001 or so in the form of a plugin; later versions of Outlook were supposed to handle MIME correctly without the use of a plugin. Other Windows clients not from Microsoft (e.g. Eudora, Thunderbird, etc.) have never had this problem. If the text portion of my email appears blank to you, and the text is instead in an attachment that you have to manually open to read, then I'd bet money the client you're using is a Microsoft product that still has the famous bug. Here's one discussion of this issue I stumbled upon after quick google: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.security.pgp.tech/browse_thread/thread/c1cc2714f27e4e33 -c -- Chris Metzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] (remove "snip-me." to email) "As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
_______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list Pan-users@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
