Bug in gthumb or a bug in mailcap? Or a bug in alpine?

[Steven W. Orr]

On Sunday, Sep 16th 2007 at 13:30 -0600, quoth Karl Larsen:

=>Steven W. Orr wrote:
=>> On a Fedora 7 box, I happen to be using alpine to read mail. A message has a
=>> jpg attachment but when I try to view it, gthumb comes up with no image. The
=>> attachment is of type Image/JPEG.
=>> 
=>> Upon investigating I see that the tmp file that got created by alpine was
=>> something called
=>> 
=>> /tmp/img-JPE431100
=>> 
=>> with no file extension.
=>> 
=>> gthumb will not display an image if the file has no extension. If I save the
=>> file with a .jpg extension then it displays nicely. Yes, there's a
=>> workaround, but you'll admit it's a pain and there's no chance of being able
=>> to teach my wife how to do this.
=>> 
=>> So who owns the bug? gthumb? alpine? mailcap? fedora?
=>> 
=>> Is there a different viewer in fedora I can use that won't have this
=>> problem?
=>> 
=>   I can't tell you why you got a email with an attached file with no .jpg or
=>other proper indication but for sure your wife and you need a better email
=>client that doesn't maul the attached files or, a new friend that sends you
=>proper files.
=>
=>   The gthumb is a wonderful software that reads the file name to learn how to
=>handle the file. If the file name doesn't include a proper .xyz gthomb just
=>never is even called.

Sorry, but we will have to disagree, but maybe not because I'm not even 
sure you understand what I was saying.

The extension of a filename may be a clue but the content of a file should 
be determined by the software without basing it on the extenstion in the 
first place. Alpine is not "mawling" anything. The attachment as described 
above was properly attached as Image/JPEG. What happened was that alpine 
saved it into a tempfile when I tried to view the attachment but with no 
file extension. It was gthumb that was incapable of even *trying* to open 
the file without an extension. Maybe you didn't realize that alpine is a 
text based MUA and so does not display any graphic data unless it is 
requested by the user.

Generally, I'm used to working with graphic software that is not dependant 
at all (except as a source of a hint) on the filename extension.

-- 
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steveo at syslang.net