--On Monday, 15 May, 2000 18:22 -0400 John Stracke
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Vernon Schryver wrote:
>
>> The practice of sending both HTML and cleartext of supposedly
>> the same message reflects very poorly on those who do it
>> intentionally and on those who cause MUA's to trick others
>> into doing it unintentionally. Never mind the security
>>...
> So why does multipart/alternative exist?
(i) For those few situations in which there is information
content in a "rich" fancy display form that cannot be rendered
in a weaker form that where it is important to get some idea of
the content through. This is clearly a judgement call on the
part of the sender, but the usual mindless attachment of an HTML
part to a plain-text message (to which I assume that Vernon is
most strongly objecting) doesn't add any more information, just
a bit of formatting that the receiving MUA could probably figure
out from a text message if the developer and user were
adequately motivated.
(ii) For situations in which the meaning of multiple rendering
is presumably the same but the string-content is very different.
E.g., one could in theory send a message out in several
different languages, tagging each, and permitting the receiving
MUA to select the message that best matches the
knowledge/usage/skills of the reader.
Of course, the security issues in the latter case are the same
as those that exist anytime you are handed text in a language
you don't understand and some other text that proports to be an
accurate translation of it.
john
