[imp] Mac attachment testing report

[Ben Poliakoff]

* Joe Kletch <joe at kletch.com> [040305 10:41]:
> 
> I'd like to better understand how IMP is recombining the resource and 
> data fork with Mac attachments.
> 

We've been tortured by these issues as well (as a primarily Mac campus
implementing webmail).

IMP is *not* recombining the resource and data fork.  It's just
offering downloads of both sub parts of the multipart/appledouble
MIME part.

IMP makes no attempt to recombine these parts, nor should it; since
the user retrieving the attachment might not be a Mac user.  A *nix or
Windows user can't do much with a multi-forked appledouble file.

Perhaps Mac web browsers will someday have the capability of
reassembling multipart/appledouble MIME attachments (in the same way
that Mac mail clients do).  But they don't do it now.  And until a Mac
web browser can reintegrate a multipart/appledouble MIME attachment then
I think our best bet is to tweak IMP so that it only offers up links to
the data fork of multipart/appledouble MIME attachments.

In a webmail context, offering up both parts of a multipart/appledouble
MIME attachment *only* confuses the vast majority of users.

Dropping the resource fork is problematic since Mac users historically
haven't had to make use of file extensions.   But I don't see a better
solution.

Try to get your users to use an archiver (stuffit, maczip, etc), if you
want to preserve the resource fork in a webmail context.

Anyone else dealing with this?  Anyone else have a better idea?

Ben

-- 
_______________________________________________________________________
Ben Poliakoff                                email: benp at imap.reed.edu
Reed College                                        tel:  503-788-6674
Unix System Administrator                          PGP key: 0x6AF52019
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