[imp] Mac attachment testing report

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting Ben Poliakoff <benp at imap.reed.edu>:

> * 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.

I am completely clueless when it comes to resource forks.  Is the problem that
Mac browsers simply can not handle multifork data passed to it?  Because if
combining the data and resource fork is something that can be done easily,
obviously we could add another link that only appears if using a 
Macintosh that
allows the user to download the multifork file.

But it sounds like (correct me if I am wrong) that there really needs 
to be some
kind of 2 part action that needs to be performed by the browser for the local
Mac to understand the file as a multi-forked file.  If that is the case, than
obviously IMP (nor any other webmail based program) can accurately process the
information.

michael

______________________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at bigworm.colorado.edu]
The University of Colorado at Boulder