IMAP doesn't like HTML formatting (resend after subject line error)

[Sam Varshavchik]

Michael Sullivan writes:

> On Thu, 2004-07-15 at 09:51, Michael Sullivan wrote:
>> Here is the header for todays Garfield comic strip:
>> 
>> Return-Path:  <48813204_22302_619 at news.gophercentral.com>
>> Received:  from mail2.gophercentral.com (mail2.gophercentral.com
>> [64.106.244.18]) by bullet.espersunited.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with SMTP
>> id i6F7YN8S003761 for <michael at espersunited.com>; Thu, 15 Jul 2004
>> 02:34:24 -0500
>> Received:  from news.gophercentral.com (news.gophercentral.com by
>> mail2.gophercentral.com (listd1.1) with SMTP id 48813204_22302_619 for
>> <michael at espersunited.com>; Thu, 15 Jul 2004 02:30:39 -0500
>> Message-Id:  <48813204_22302_619 at news.gophercentral.com>
>> Subject: Garfield - Tree Frogs
>> From: Garfield <listmanager at gophercentral.com>
>> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 02:30:39 -0500
>> To: michael at espersunited.com <michael at espersunited.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII
>> X-Evolution-Source: imap://michael@pop.espersunited.com/
>> 
>> I think I see the problem.  The Content-Type is listed as text/plain.
>> It should probably be text/html.

There's also another problem: the “Mime-Version:” header appears to be 
missing.  Unless this header is present, the Content-Type header is ignored.

Even if the header was changed to text/html, all properly-written MIME 
software will still interpret this message as consisting of plain text 
content.

>>                                   Is there anything I can do about it on
>> my end?

You most certainly can.  I recall that in your first message you have 
described your problem as: Evolution displays this message as an HTML 
message when it's in POP3 mode and has to parse the message itself. Only 
when Evolution is in IMAP mode, and relies on the IMAP server to parse the 
message, do you see the raw HTML.

What you can do now is send a congratulatory note to the Evolution team, 
thanking them for finally matching the Microsoftian idiocy, bug-for-bug, by 
adapting the philosophy from Microsoft's E-mail virus distribution software, 
called “Outlook Express”, of ignoring the actual stated E-mail content, and 
instead displaying it as HTML if it sees something that looks like HTML in 
the message.  All in the name of “user-friendliness”.

If you recall: there were a number of times last year when all the 
anti-virus companies had to scramble like mad when it came to light that -- 
for example -- if an E-mail attachment was labeled as an image/jpeg picture, 
but its payload looked like a Windows binary, Outlook Express will ignore 
the stated MIME type of image/jpeg, and run the binary payload.  The same 
held true for Javascript attachments, and many other “innovative” kinds of 
attachments.

I'm thrilled that the same exciting feature is now apparently implemented in 
Evolution!

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