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> MIME is quite complicated, and in fact, I challenge anyone here to point to any mail client properly support complex MIME structures, with hierarchies includi

> MIME is quite complicated, and in fact, I challenge anyone here to point to any mail client properly support complex MIME structures, with hierarchies including multipart, alternative and so on. What failures do you see most often in this area? Alternatively, what popular software gets this wrong? I'm not disputing your statement. It's just that one of my back burner hobby projects includes a new MIME parser, and identifying common pitfalls might help me feel confident that I get it right. Finding useful test data turns out to be harder than I expected. It's doing quite well with the messages I've thrown at it so far.

einpoklum 7y ago
> What failures do you see most often in this area? Alternatively, what popular software gets this wrong? They don't even try in order to fail. They drop the alternatives and flatten consecutive parts - and that's that. You can't see the part tree, you can't fold different parts, there's no distinct rendering for "report", there's no representation of the "related" type, etc. Consequently, there is no support for changing rendering settings or otherwise manipulating different parts, nor for removal or addition of parts .
- foresto 7y ago
  Back when I used Windows, I had a mailer (and usenet news reader) called Forté Agent. I liked the fact that it didn't hide things from me. When a content type was unknown or unsupported, it would still be represented (usually as an icon) in the displayed message. The MIME structure could be examined in a pop-up window, hierarchy intact, and individual parts could be scrolled into view or saved as files. Even preambles and epilogues were visible in the raw display mode. http://www.forteinc.com/agent/ http://www.forteinc.com/agent/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort%C3%A9_Agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort%C3%A9_Agent How have I done with respect to your challenge? :) I wish more mailers were so good at just presenting the data, rather than mutating it to fit some designer's limited imagination or some programmer's limited patience.

einpoklum 7y ago

> What failures do you see most often in this area? Alternatively, what popular software gets this wrong? They don't even try in order to fail. They drop the alternatives and flatten consecutive parts - and that's that. You can't see the part tree, you can't fold different parts, there's no distinct rendering for "report", there's no representation of the "related" type, etc. Consequently, there is no support for changing rendering settings or otherwise manipulating different parts, nor for removal or addition of parts .

foresto 7y ago
Back when I used Windows, I had a mailer (and usenet news reader) called Forté Agent. I liked the fact that it didn't hide things from me. When a content type was unknown or unsupported, it would still be represented (usually as an icon) in the displayed message. The MIME structure could be examined in a pop-up window, hierarchy intact, and individual parts could be scrolled into view or saved as files. Even preambles and epilogues were visible in the raw display mode. http://www.forteinc.com/agent/ http://www.forteinc.com/agent/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort%C3%A9_Agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort%C3%A9_Agent How have I done with respect to your challenge? :) I wish more mailers were so good at just presenting the data, rather than mutating it to fit some designer's limited imagination or some programmer's limited patience.