[dev] Fwd: Re: Patch I submitted

Conor Kerr conor at dev.ceon.net
Thu Mar 6 19:24:13 PST 2003


Hi,

> Yes - RFC compliance in those other readers!

I don't claim to know any of the reasoning behind the decision to make
the RFC as such but from a purely practical point of view what's the
difference in this case?  What is the distinction between displaying an
image marked as "inline" inline in IMP and an image marked as
"attachment" inline in IMP *given that* IMP will only display images if
browsers have the necessary software registered?

> They are *explicitly* ignoring
> a setting that says that the image should *not* be shown inline - and this
> is actually a security problem in some cases.

If I wanted to create a security problem I can't see why it would make a
difference *in IMP's case* what content-disposition my attachments are
set to.

> Why should we break the RFC?

Because doing so won't affect anyone in any way except that of making
their lives simpler? :)

The majority of email software attaches images as base64 encoded
attachments of content-disposition "attachment".  The ideals that RFCs
express are well and good but sometimes their absolute and unfoundering
implentation isn't useful.  (I'd rather that wasn't the case, I believe
a lot more standards should be imposed on software, [especially in the
user-interface department], but alas it's not always practical.)

Of course if I am wrong in this matter someone please enlighten me.

I look forward to hearing feedback on this.  All the best...

Conor

--
Conor Kerr
Amiga Developer, Ceon Ltd., Northern Ireland
www.ceon.net  conor at dev.ceon.net




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