On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 10:21:29AM -0600, lee wrote: > On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 02:36:41PM +0100, Noah Slater wrote: > > I guess in some general sense you are correct, but within the > > context of a MUA, an attachment has a very specific and well defined > > meaning, that is much more narrow than this. > > Well, I'm not trying to mislead someone. Where is defined what an > attachment is for the context of a MUA, and who made the definition?
To the best of my knowledge, it isn't defined anywhere. But that doesn't matter. The common understanding of an attachment is that it is a file, with a filename, that has been sent as a separate item from the message. > > An attachment is a message entity that a user is likely to add or > > save to and from the file system, as separate to the main message. > > In Kyles example, that would be saving the html attachment to view it > in a web browser. The user might do that himself, the MUA might do it > automatically. If you use a MUA that cannot display text/plain, you > might save the text/plain to display it ... This is NOT a typical use case. > And who is to decide how likely a particular user is to save a > particular attachment, for the purpose of the MUA counting the > attachments? The authors of the MUA. > To me, it has clearly three attachments. It doesn't matter if a user > is likely to save an attachment or not. And you should be free to configure your MUA to display those as attachments, but the way you think about message parts is uncommon, and would be confusing for the average user. Best, -- Noah Slater, http://tumbolia.org/nslater
