AOL is smoking crack.

am 10.02.2006 00:47:57 von Sam

Re: AOL is smoking crack.

am 11.02.2006 01:52:07 von Thomas Edison

On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 17:47:57 -0600, Sam typed:

>Someone wrote me claiming that they saw the following header coming out of
>AOL:
>
> Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
> boundary*0=--------MailBlocks_8C7F1B87B4BF285_8F4_1CC53_mblk -r12.sysops.a;
> boundary*1=ol.com
>
>With the MIME boundary delimiter string being:
>
> ----------MailBlocks_8C7F1B87B4BF285_8F4_1CC53_mblk-r12.syso ps.aol.com
>
>AOL needs to find the brainiac who thought this one up, and give him a
>random drug test.

Sam, can you explain what this means for those of us who are equally
guilty of substance abuse ?

Thanks.

NoSleep.

Re: AOL is smoking crack.

am 11.02.2006 02:43:18 von keeling

NoSleep :
> On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 17:47:57 -0600, Sam typed:
>
> >Someone wrote me claiming that they saw the following header coming out of
> >AOL:
> >
> > Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
> > boundary*0=--------MailBlocks_8C7F1B87B4BF285_8F4_1CC53_mblk -r12.sysops.a;
> > boundary*1=ol.com
> >
> >With the MIME boundary delimiter string being:
> >
> > ----------MailBlocks_8C7F1B87B4BF285_8F4_1CC53_mblk-r12.syso ps.aol.com
> >
>
> Sam, can you explain what this means for those of us who are equally
> guilty of substance abuse ?

It means the body of the message lies between the "a" and the "o" of
the string "aol". Or the first boundary ends with "a" and the second
boundary begins with "ol". Or some such thereabouts.

It means AOHell fscked up, is what it means.

--
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(*) http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling Linux Counter #80292
- - Spammers! http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling/autospam.html
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

Re: AOL is smoking crack.

am 11.02.2006 02:51:47 von Sam

Re: AOL is smoking crack.

am 11.02.2006 05:10:57 von Reestit Mutton

On 2006-02-11, Sam wrote:
> This is a MIME GnuPG-signed message. If you see this text, it means that
> your E-mail or Usenet software does not support MIME signed messages.
> The Internet standard for MIME PGP messages, RFC 2015, was published in 1996.
> To open this message correctly you will need to install E-mail or Usenet
> software that supports modern Internet standards.

Would someone explain to me why I would want to "open this message
correctly"? Running slrn-0.9.8.0, latest version is 0.9.8.1.

Thanks,

Longfellow

Re: AOL is smoking crack.

am 11.02.2006 05:27:48 von Sam

Re: AOL is smoking crack.

am 11.02.2006 09:18:16 von Reestit Mutton

On 2006-02-11, Sam wrote:

>>> This is a MIME GnuPG-signed message. If you see this text, it means that
>>> your E-mail or Usenet software does not support MIME signed messages.
>>> The Internet standard for MIME PGP messages, RFC 2015, was published in 1996.
>>> To open this message correctly you will need to install E-mail or Usenet
>>> software that supports modern Internet standards.
>>
>> Would someone explain to me why I would want to "open this message
>> correctly"?
>
> And who exactly the fook are you, and why should anyone care?
>
>> Running slrn-0.9.8.0, latest version is 0.9.8.1.
>
> My condolences.

ROFL!!!!

Longfellow

Re: AOL is smoking crack.

am 12.02.2006 02:34:25 von Thomas Edison

On Sat, 11 Feb 2006 08:18:16 -0000, Longfellow typed:

>On 2006-02-11, Sam wrote:
>
>
>>>> This is a MIME GnuPG-signed message. If you see this text, it means that
>>>> your E-mail or Usenet software does not support MIME signed messages.
>>>> The Internet standard for MIME PGP messages, RFC 2015, was published in 1996.
>>>> To open this message correctly you will need to install E-mail or Usenet
>>>> software that supports modern Internet standards.
>>>
>>> Would someone explain to me why I would want to "open this message
>>> correctly"?
>>
>> And who exactly the fook are you, and why should anyone care?
>>
>>> Running slrn-0.9.8.0, latest version is 0.9.8.1.
>>
>> My condolences.
>
>ROFL!!!!

Indeed.

Thanks Sam and s.keeling for the explanation of the original post.

Sam's a good poster here, as are many others. He's the only guy I've
seen who can repel Beavis successfully. ((Aside : I do not killfile
Beavis (Alan Connor), even for 90 seconds, as I pity him rather than
dislike him.))

Sorry for the irrelevance. I'm as drunk as a skunk. Yep, hard day.

I will trawl through the RFC you mentioned Sam, and try and generate
clue. Thanks.

NoSleep.

Re: AOL is smoking crack.

am 13.02.2006 07:00:46 von Troy Piggins

* Longfellow wrote:
> On 2006-02-11, Sam wrote:
>> This is a MIME GnuPG-signed message. If you see this text, it means that
>> your E-mail or Usenet software does not support MIME signed messages.
>> The Internet standard for MIME PGP messages, RFC 2015, was published in 1996.
>> To open this message correctly you will need to install E-mail or Usenet
>> software that supports modern Internet standards.
>
> Would someone explain to me why I would want to "open this message
> correctly"? Running slrn-0.9.8.0, latest version is 0.9.8.1.

slrn doesn't decode Sam's MIME GPG posts correctly. I've asked this
question before - his newsreader's messages/boundaries etc comply with
all the relevant RFCs etc, slrn just doesn't process them correctly.

He is the only poster I have come across in any newsgroup whose messages
look like that. Not his fault.

If it's any consolation, I have hacked a script, and am working on
another, that parses messages and strips that GPG stuff off them. It's
pretty ugly since it isn't actually decoding or anything, it just runs
the message through sed/awk and deletes the MIME stuff. It's not in
any condition for me to give out yet, but will let you know if/when I
do.

There are other MIME macros for slrn around that are supposed to handle
them, but his just don't seem to work.

--
Troy Piggins
Ubuntu 5.10 pkgs : kernel 2.6.12-9-386, postfix 2.2.4, procmail 3.22
Compiled from src : slrn 0.9.8.1/rt (score_color patch), mutt 1.5.11i
vim 6.4

Re: AOL is smoking crack.

am 13.02.2006 15:28:09 von Frank Slootweg

Troy Piggins wrote:
> * Longfellow wrote:
> > On 2006-02-11, Sam wrote:
> >> This is a MIME GnuPG-signed message. If you see this text, it means that
> >> your E-mail or Usenet software does not support MIME signed messages.
> >> The Internet standard for MIME PGP messages, RFC 2015, was published in 1996.
> >> To open this message correctly you will need to install E-mail or Usenet
> >> software that supports modern Internet standards.
> >
> > Would someone explain to me why I would want to "open this message
> > correctly"? Running slrn-0.9.8.0, latest version is 0.9.8.1.
>
> slrn doesn't decode Sam's MIME GPG posts correctly. I've asked this
> question before - his newsreader's messages/boundaries etc comply with
> all the relevant RFCs etc, slrn just doesn't process them correctly.
>
> He is the only poster I have come across in any newsgroup whose messages
> look like that. Not his fault.
>
> If it's any consolation, I have hacked a script, and am working on
> another, that parses messages and strips that GPG stuff off them. It's
> pretty ugly since it isn't actually decoding or anything, it just runs
> the message through sed/awk and deletes the MIME stuff. It's not in
> any condition for me to give out yet, but will let you know if/when I
> do.
>
> There are other MIME macros for slrn around that are supposed to handle
> them, but his just don't seem to work.

This probably belongs in news.software.readers, but can't slrn be
configured to (more or less) *ignore* MIME parts other than
"text/plain"?

For example in 'my' newsreader, tin, I have set "metamail_prog=", i.e.
to blank, which will just *mention* non-text/plain parts, instead of
trying to display them. Sam's PGP signature just gives this one line:

> [-- application/pgp-signature, encoding 7bit, 8 lines --]

The only, minor, drawback, of this is that all parts are marked,
(with "[-- ... --]" lines), also the text/plain part, and that those
one-line markers will also be in a response, so you have to edit them
out before posting.

So in the editor, a response will look like:

[Start quote:]
Sam wrote:
> [-- text/plain, encoding 7bit, charset: US-ASCII, 15 lines --]
[normal quoted text]
> [-- text/plain, encoding quoted-printable, charset: UTF-8, 55 lines --]
[End quote.]

Snipping the two marker lines is of course trivial.

Re: AOL is smoking crack.

am 13.02.2006 18:42:36 von Neil Woods

On Mon, Feb 13 2006, Troy Piggins wrote:

> * Longfellow wrote:
>> On 2006-02-11, Sam wrote:
>>> This is a MIME GnuPG-signed message. If you see this text, it means
>>> that your E-mail or Usenet software does not support MIME signed
>>> messages. The Internet standard for MIME PGP messages, RFC 2015,
>>> was published in 1996. To open this message correctly you will need
>>> to install E-mail or Usenet software that supports modern Internet
>>> standards.
>>
>> Would someone explain to me why I would want to "open this message
>> correctly"? Running slrn-0.9.8.0, latest version is 0.9.8.1.
>
> slrn doesn't decode Sam's MIME GPG posts correctly. I've asked this
> question before - his newsreader's messages/boundaries etc comply with
> all the relevant RFCs etc, slrn just doesn't process them correctly.
>
> He is the only poster I have come across in any newsgroup whose
> messages look like that. Not his fault.
>
> If it's any consolation, I have hacked a script, and am working on
> another, that parses messages and strips that GPG stuff off them.
> It's pretty ugly since it isn't actually decoding or anything, it just
> runs the message through sed/awk and deletes the MIME stuff. It's not
> in any condition for me to give out yet, but will let you know if/when
> I do.
>
> There are other MIME macros for slrn around that are supposed to
> handle them, but his just don't seem to work.

You can use the "demime"¹ Perl script for this. Simply piping the post
through demime using the | slrn command should do the trick.

However, this produces the output on stdout, which is not ideal. If
there was a way in slrn to pipe an article and have the result replace
the displayed article, it would be an ideal solution. Perhaps this is
achievable with a macro.

¹Available at

Crosspost & Followup-To: news.software.readers
--
Neil.
BOFH excuse #153:

Big to little endian conversion error

it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 13.02.2006 20:36:24 von Mark Crispin

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Frank Slootweg wrote:
> This probably belongs in news.software.readers, but can't slrn be
> configured to (more or less) *ignore* MIME parts other than
> "text/plain"?

Leaving aside the question of whether newsgroup postings should be
PGP-signed, the problem is not that slrn isn't configured to ignore MIME
parts other than text/plain.

The problem is that slrn doesn't support MIME at all. If it supported
MIME at all, it would not have shown the text in question. That text is
normally invisible to users of a MIME-capable client.

It has been 15 years since MIME was introduced. As one of the members of
the working group that created MIME, I am saddened to hear that people are
still complaining about reading MIME messages in non-MIME MUAs.

I suspect that the only reason why this still occurs in USENET is that the
USENET community got needlessly distracted by those individuals who
peddled the "just send 8-bits, we don't need MIME" snake-oil as a solution
for the need to send messages in languages that require more than the 26
Latin alphabetics in ASCII (including most Western European languages).

The implicit assumption of the snake-oil peddlers was that since terminals
in the USA were migrating from VT100 extended ASCII to ISO 8859-1 anyway,
it was alright just to send 8-bit text and that would solve the
internationalization problem (disregarding Eastern Europe and East Asia).

Some of us recognized the snake-oil for what it was, and opposed it; but
the people who wanted to keep slrn etc. unmodified from the 1970s were
quite loud and vocal.

This may be a surprise to some people, it was internationalization, not
multi-media mail or PGP, that drove the standarization of MIME.

Multi-media mail (MMM) had been around for many years before MIME, but
languished in obscurity since few people were interested in it (chicken
and egg problem). The MMM people (correctly) saw the tagging requirements
of internationalization as something that they could piggy-back on; and
thus they made sure that MIME had MMM capabilities.

It's 15 years later. Most countries of the world (even North Korea!) have
an Internet presence. Email is fully internationalized, with many
non-Latin scripts. We also have widespread multi-media mail in the form
of HTML mail (a bug, not a feature...). All of this depends upon MIME.

It's long past time to retire non-MIME MUAs. It's certainly long past
time to stop complaining about MIME format messages.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 13.02.2006 21:34:35 von Frank Slootweg

Mark Crispin wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Frank Slootweg wrote:
> > This probably belongs in news.software.readers, but can't slrn be
> > configured to (more or less) *ignore* MIME parts other than
> > "text/plain"?
>
> Leaving aside the question of whether newsgroup postings should be
> PGP-signed, the problem is not that slrn isn't configured to ignore MIME
> parts other than text/plain.
>
> The problem is that slrn doesn't support MIME at all. If it supported
> MIME at all, it would not have shown the text in question. That text is
> normally invisible to users of a MIME-capable client.
>
> It has been 15 years since MIME was introduced. As one of the members of
> the working group that created MIME, I am saddened to hear that people are
> still complaining about reading MIME messages in non-MIME MUAs.

Just a minor nit: slrn is not a *M*UA, it's a newsreader [1]. Not that
that invalidates the (general) point(s) you are making, but just for
correctness.

As to "slrn doesn't support MIME at all":

Don't know about that. AFAIK, slrn has some MIME support, at least for
some common "charset=" character sets, i.e. ISO 8859/X. But quite
possibly it just does not support "multipart". If so, it's probably
better to say something like "slrn has [very|too] little MIME support.",
or just specifically say what it does or does not support.

FWIW, IMO 'sensible' [2] "charset=" support is sufficient for a (text)
*newsreader*. But that's just my opinion and experience, YMMV.

[rest deleted]

[1] Yes, AFAIK, it can *send* mail, but that doesn't make it a MUA, at
most a MSA (if I got the terminology right (Treading on *very* dangerous
ground here! :-)).

[2] I.e. which supports the character sets needed by/for the intended
user base.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 13.02.2006 21:52:45 von Karl Kleinpaste

Frank Slootweg writes:
> Just a minor nit: slrn is not a *M*UA, it's a newsreader.

The difference between news and mail is the size of the receiving
audience.

In the face of gateways which operate in either direction, you must
assume that anything mailed to a mailing list becomes a Usenet posting
somewhere, and anything posted on a Usenet newsgroup becomes mail
somewhere else.

Consider that everything from Gnus to Outlook Express to Evolution to
Thunderbird does news and mail in a single client program. The days
of the "mail OR news, pick one" client went the day of the dodo bird a
decade ago (and for some of us, a whole lot longer ago than that).
It's time that slrn users discovered that fact.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 13.02.2006 22:24:16 von Mark Crispin

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Frank Slootweg wrote:
> Just a minor nit: slrn is not a *M*UA, it's a newsreader [1]. Not that
> that invalidates the (general) point(s) you are making, but just for
> correctness.

slrn is most certainly a "messaging user agent", which is the correct
expansion of MUA even though many people believe that it is "mail user
agent." The fact that slrn may specialize in NNTP or local news spool
is unimportant.

I know about the religion of "news is news, and mail is mail, and ne'er
the twain shall meet"; but that religion has long ago passed into the
realm of "quaint but incorrect notions of the past."

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 13.02.2006 22:25:12 von Mark Crispin

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
> Consider that everything from Gnus to Outlook Express to Evolution to
> Thunderbird does news and mail in a single client program.

And Pine :-)

> The days
> of the "mail OR news, pick one" client went the day of the dodo bird a
> decade ago (and for some of us, a whole lot longer ago than that).
> It's time that slrn users discovered that fact.

Bravo. Well said.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 13.02.2006 22:45:42 von Frank Slootweg

Mark Crispin wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Frank Slootweg wrote:
> > Just a minor nit: slrn is not a *M*UA, it's a newsreader [1]. Not that
> > that invalidates the (general) point(s) you are making, but just for
> > correctness.
>
> slrn is most certainly a "messaging user agent", which is the correct
> expansion of MUA even though many people believe that it is "mail user
> agent." The fact that slrn may specialize in NNTP or local news spool
> is unimportant.

Thanks for the education! I think that many of the (other) mail
'specialists' in this group also think that MUA means MailUA, so I can
hardly blame myself for being mistaken.

A quick search (Google "define:" and Wikepedia) gave more MailUA
explanations than MessagingUA ones, so a (reliable) cite/pointer would
be nice for future reference.

> I know about the religion of "news is news, and mail is mail, and ne'er
> the twain shall meet"; but that religion has long ago passed into the
> realm of "quaint but incorrect notions of the past."

Well, I value your opinion(s), but I think that the religion of "news
is mail" (and vice versa) is equally "quaint". There are large
similarities and more similarities than differences, but equating them
has also created a lot of problems, both in the past and in the present.
But that's just *my* (over) two decades of experience with both.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 13.02.2006 22:57:39 von Frank Slootweg

Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
> Frank Slootweg writes:
> > Just a minor nit: slrn is not a *M*UA, it's a newsreader.
>
> The difference between news and mail is the size of the receiving
> audience.

Yup, and the same goes for a newspaper and a letter. Your point being?

> In the face of gateways which operate in either direction, you must
> assume that anything mailed to a mailing list becomes a Usenet posting
> somewhere, and anything posted on a Usenet newsgroup becomes mail
> somewhere else.

And exactly who was talking about gateways?

> Consider that everything from Gnus to Outlook Express to Evolution to
> Thunderbird does news and mail in a single client program. The days
> of the "mail OR news, pick one" client went the day of the dodo bird a
> decade ago (and for some of us, a whole lot longer ago than that).
> It's time that slrn users discovered that fact.

Yeah, I know about the "Why do one thing well if you can do two things
badly!?" paradigm. Sorry, but I don't buy it. If someone is happy with a
combined client, then good for hir, but to imply that a combined client
is (always) superior, is rather silly.

Sorry for my above 'tone', but I kind of dislike silly, patronizing
remarks.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 13.02.2006 23:14:37 von Mark Crispin

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Frank Slootweg wrote:
> Thanks for the education! I think that many of the (other) mail
> 'specialists' in this group also think that MUA means MailUA, so I can
> hardly blame myself for being mistaken.

Indeed, a lot of documentation uses the "mail user agent" expansion.
Things are further confused by other acronym expansions which have changed
over time. For example, in IMAP the "I" has changed meaning twice as well
as the "M" changing meaning.

It's probably better to say that "mail user agent" is the "old/obsolete
understanding", and "messaging user agent" is the "modern understanding".
Put another way, it's not so much "wrong" to say that "MUA means mail user
agent" as it is to say "the M in MUA excludes any form of messaging other
than RFC [2]822 email."

Note, by the way, that messaging encompasses a much wider range than
USENET news and RFC [2]822 email. Such seemingly-orthogonal things as
SMS, MMS, and even provider-specific messaging (Blackberry, VGS mail,
Sha-Mail, Sky Mail, Super Mail, Long Mail, etc.) are also part of
messaging.

> Well, I value your opinion(s), but I think that the religion of "news
> is mail" (and vice versa) is equally "quaint". There are large
> similarities and more similarities than differences, but equating them
> has also created a lot of problems, both in the past and in the present.

I agree that that there have been problems. In my opinion most of these
problems have been caused by careless implementations (particularly on the
USENET end), such as USENET clients that send RFC [2]822 email containing
Newsgroups: headers when the message was not actually posted.

Nevertheless, RFC [2]822 mail and USENET news are unified today. Some
individuals may not have reconciled themselves to it. Then again, some
individuals have not reconciled themselves to the reality of evolution; or
that man really did land on the moon on July 20, 1969; or that smoking is
a cause of lung cancer; or any of a number of similar "controversies".

What's more, additional elements of messaging are being introduced and
unified. It's happening as we speak.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 00:09:54 von cfajohnson

On 2006-02-13, Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
> Frank Slootweg writes:
>> Just a minor nit: slrn is not a *M*UA, it's a newsreader.
>
> The difference between news and mail is the size of the receiving
> audience.

The difference between an individual e-mail and an individual
Usenet message may be small, but the differences between their
delivery systems is considerable.

> In the face of gateways which operate in either direction, you must
> assume that anything mailed to a mailing list becomes a Usenet posting
> somewhere, and anything posted on a Usenet newsgroup becomes mail
> somewhere else.
>
> Consider that everything from Gnus to Outlook Express to Evolution to
> Thunderbird does news and mail in a single client program. The days
> of the "mail OR news, pick one" client went the day of the dodo bird a
> decade ago (and for some of us, a whole lot longer ago than that).
> It's time that slrn users discovered that fact.

I have yet to find a single tool that works adequately for both. I
use Pine as my mail client, but its news interface is barely
tolerable.

--
Chris F.A. Johnson, author |
Shell Scripting Recipes: | My code in this post, if any,
A Problem-Solution Approach | is released under the
2005, Apress | GNU General Public Licence

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 00:12:49 von Karl Kleinpaste

Frank Slootweg writes:
>>> Just a minor nit: slrn is not a *M*UA, it's a newsreader.

Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
>> The difference between news and mail is the size of the receiving
>> audience.

Frank Slootweg writes:
> Yup, and the same goes for a newspaper and a letter. Your point being?

That your attempt to distinguish slrn so as to separate it from the
question of MIME is wrong.

>> In the face of gateways which operate in either direction, you must
>> assume that anything mailed to a mailing list becomes a Usenet posting
>> somewhere, and anything posted on a Usenet newsgroup becomes mail
>> somewhere else.

> And exactly who was talking about gateways?

You are, whether you realize it (or like it) or not.

My point which escaped you above is obvious, painfully so. You
attempt to distinguish your newsreader based on the fact that it's
Usenet-centric, and somehow thereby excuse it for having inadequate
MIME support. It is a useless distinction and a failed excuse, and
has been so for over a decade. The distinction was always weak to
begin with, considering that Usenet standards have always readily
deferred to mail-specific standards in areas such as message format;
it is lost entirely in the face of gateways, which date to the old
fa.* ("from arpanet") newsgroups of the early '80s. MIME standards
apply. Claiming to distinguish slrn as not being mail-specific, and
(therefore, I suppose) not due to stay technically adequate in those
standards, is wrong, on a purely technical basis. Your "nit," as you
called it, is not even a nit; it is a nullity.

> Yeah, I know about the "Why do one thing well if you can do two things
> badly!?" paradigm. Sorry, but I don't buy it. If someone is happy with a
> combined client, then good for hir, but to imply that a combined client
> is (always) superior, is rather silly.

It would be worthwhile to consider how many clients are specific to
just mail or news these days. Slrn is very nearly alone, even in an
enumeration of clients, much less in user base. There is a reason for
that, grounded in the technical similarity between the two,
particularly considering that Joe Random, who doesn't even know what
the acronyms POP, IMAP, SMTP, and NNTP are supposed to be about, and
who barely manages to configure his client for them in the absence of
that understanding, doesn't care how his bits get from his screen to
yours, so long as they do. Objectively, by far, Joe Random does not
*want* two distinct messaging clients. If you wish to preserve this
irrelevant distinction for your own purposes, the onus is on you to do
it well, and I would add, to do so in a manner which prevents anyone
else from having to know, much less care.

> Sorry for my above 'tone', but I kind of dislike silly, patronizing
> remarks.

It's not patronizing; it's an accurate description of the state of the
messaging universe, for years upon years now; slrn has not kept pace.

Sorry, if my tone offends you. Until this final paragraph, it was
merely an even-tempered tone intended for those with an ear tuned to it.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 00:25:13 von Karl Kleinpaste

"Chris F.A. Johnson" writes:
> The difference between an individual e-mail and an individual
> Usenet message may be small, but the differences between their
> delivery systems is considerable.

Joe Random does not care about delivery systems; that is possibly the
single biggest reason why combined clients have essentially completely
taken over the space of message clients. Joe Random does not want to
have to configure and run two distinct programs which, as far as he
can tell, do the same thing.

Re: AOL is smoking crack.

am 14.02.2006 00:48:57 von Troy Piggins

[crossposted and followup set to news.software.readers]
* Frank Slootweg wrote:
> Troy Piggins wrote:
>> * Longfellow wrote:
>> > On 2006-02-11, Sam wrote:
>> >> This is a MIME GnuPG-signed message. If you see this text, it
>> >> means that your E-mail or Usenet software does not support MIME
>> >> signed messages. The Internet standard for MIME PGP messages, RFC
>> >> 2015, was published in 1996. To open this message correctly you
>> >> will need to install E-mail or Usenet software that supports
>> >> modern Internet standards.
>> >
>> > Would someone explain to me why I would want to "open this message
>> > correctly"? Running slrn-0.9.8.0, latest version is 0.9.8.1.
>>
>> slrn doesn't decode Sam's MIME GPG posts correctly. I've asked this
>> question before - his newsreader's messages/boundaries etc comply
>> with all the relevant RFCs etc, slrn just doesn't process them
>> correctly.
>>
>> He is the only poster I have come across in any newsgroup whose
>> messages look like that. Not his fault.
>>
>> If it's any consolation, I have hacked a script, and am working on
>> another, that parses messages and strips that GPG stuff off them.
>> It's pretty ugly since it isn't actually decoding or anything, it
>> just runs the message through sed/awk and deletes the MIME stuff.
>> It's not in any condition for me to give out yet, but will let you
>> know if/when I do.
>>
>> There are other MIME macros for slrn around that are supposed to
>> handle them, but his just don't seem to work.
>
> This probably belongs in news.software.readers, but can't slrn be
> configured to (more or less) *ignore* MIME parts other than
> "text/plain"?

Crossposted...

I have tried slrn's setting :

set use_mime 0

but still the same junk is there.

> For example in 'my' newsreader, tin, I have set "metamail_prog=",
> i.e. to blank, which will just *mention* non-text/plain parts,
> instead of trying to display them. Sam's PGP signature just gives
> this one line:
>
>> [-- application/pgp-signature, encoding 7bit, 8 lines --]
>
> The only, minor, drawback, of this is that all parts are marked,
> (with "[-- ... --]" lines), also the text/plain part, and that those
> one-line markers will also be in a response, so you have to edit
> them out before posting.
>
> So in the editor, a response will look like:
>
> [Start quote:] Sam wrote:
>> [-- text/plain, encoding 7bit, charset: US-ASCII, 15 lines --]
> [normal quoted text]
>> [-- text/plain, encoding quoted-printable, charset: UTF-8, 55 lines
>> --]
> [End quote.]
>
> Snipping the two marker lines is of course trivial.

I'm still looking at solutions - Neil Woods has suggested piping through
a perl script 'demime' which I am about to play with.

--
Troy Piggins
Ubuntu 5.10 pkgs : kernel 2.6.12-9-386, postfix 2.2.4, procmail 3.22
Compiled from src : slrn 0.9.8.1/rt (score_color patch), mutt 1.5.11i
vim 6.4

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 01:11:28 von Mark Crispin

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
> Joe Random does not care about delivery systems; that is possibly the
> single biggest reason why combined clients have essentially completely
> taken over the space of message clients. Joe Random does not want to
> have to configure and run two distinct programs which, as far as he
> can tell, do the same thing.

Exactly. As the saying goes, "A difference which makes no difference is
no difference."

Although some old farts may mourn the demise of an effective difference
between news and e-mail, only a minority of old farts ever supported the
preservation of that difference. Far more old farts worked to remove it.

What amazes me is that we're still talking about this issue in 2006.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 01:14:21 von Mark Crispin

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
> I have yet to find a single tool that works adequately for both. I
> use Pine as my mail client, but its news interface is barely
> tolerable.

As usual, one's mileage will vary.

I find Pine to be the only program with a tolerable news interface. Most
of the complaints that I have heard about Pine's news interface has to do
with NNTP servers which are designed to optimize for a particular news
reader rather than follow the published protocol.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 01:50:46 von Alan Connor

On comp.mail.misc, in , "Mark Crispin" wrote:
> Path: newsspool2.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink .net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!elnk-atl-nf2!newsfeed.ea rthlink.net!nx02.iad01.newshosting.com!newshosting.com!newsf eed.news2me.com!newshub.sdsu.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!arcli ght.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!pangtzu.panda.com!mrc
> From: Mark Crispin
> Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
> Subject: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs
> Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 11:36:24 -0800
> Organization: University of Washington
> Lines: 54
> Sender: mrc@pangtzu.panda.com
> Message-ID:
> References: <11uqouh5bfrjg6c@corp.supernews.com> <20060213155348@usenet.piggo.com> <43f09779$0$64789$dbd49001@news.wanadoo.nl>
> NNTP-Posting-Host: pangtzu.panda.com
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
> X-Trace: gnus01.u.washington.edu 1139859390 27728 206.124.149.117 (13 Feb 2006 19:36:30 GMT)
> X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu
> NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:36:30 +0000 (UTC)
> In-Reply-To: <43f09779$0$64789$dbd49001@news.wanadoo.nl>
> Xref: news.earthlink.net comp.mail.misc:76489
> X-Received-Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 11:36:33 PST (newsspool2.news.pas.earthlink.net)

> Subject: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

No it isn't. It is time to install filters that convert HTML
and MIME into Plain Text.

I've done it already for HTML on my non-earthlink addresses,
with procmail:

:0
* ^Content-Type:.*html
{

#convert HTML to Plain Text, body only

:0 bf
| w3m -dump -cols 80 -T text/html

# rewrite the Content-Type header so that the MUA
# processes the mail as Plain Text, headers only

:0 hf
| formail -I"Content-Type: text/plain"
}

This fellow is a chronic and unrepentant Netiquette violator,
a stuck-up academic who thinks he's better than the rest of
us. I don't read his articles.

[Note: I don't read the posts of "Sam" or his numerous
sockpuppets or his 'friends', nor any responses to them.]

Alan

--
http://home.earthlink.net/~alanconnor/contact.html
see also: links.html and newsfilter.html
Other URLs of possible interest in my headers.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 02:55:35 von Sam

RFC 2231 and boundary -parameter (Re: AOL is smoking crack.)

am 14.02.2006 05:58:43 von Kari Hurtta

Sam writes:

> Someone wrote me claiming that they saw the following header coming
> out of AOL:
>
> Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
> boundary*0=--------MailBlocks_8C7F1B87B4BF285_8F4_1CC53_mblk -r12.sysops.a;
> boundary*1=ol.com
>
> With the MIME boundary delimiter string being:
>
> ----------MailBlocks_8C7F1B87B4BF285_8F4_1CC53_mblk-r12.syso ps.aol.com
>
> AOL needs to find the brainiac who thought this one up, and give him a
> random drug test.

This is RFC 2231: MIME Parameter Value and Encoded Word Extensions: Character Sets,
Languages, and Continuations

Can someone confirm that this do NOT apply to mime boundary values, please?

Currently I do not accept RFC 2231 encoding for MIME boundary paramater
although I have implemented RFC 2231 encoding and decoding on my MUA.

/ Kari Hurtta

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 09:36:44 von Peter Peters

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006 18:25:13 -0500, Karl Kleinpaste
wrote:

>"Chris F.A. Johnson" writes:
>> The difference between an individual e-mail and an individual
>> Usenet message may be small, but the differences between their
>> delivery systems is considerable.
>
>Joe Random does not care about delivery systems; that is possibly the
>single biggest reason why combined clients have essentially completely
>taken over the space of message clients. Joe Random does not want to
>have to configure and run two distinct programs which, as far as he
>can tell, do the same thing.

But then again he askes himself why he should configure two seperate
(actually three) servers to read and write his messages. And Joe Random
still manages to put his e-mail up onto a newsserver or mails his usenet
postings to spamtraps. And after he got to know how he can remove his
mail from the newsserver he keeps trying to remove his usenet posting
out of the recipients mailbox.

The fact that Joe Random is using one client to do both is not a pre.

--
Peter Peters, senior netwerkbeheerder
Dienst Informatietechnologie, Bibliotheek en Educatie (ITBE)
Universiteit Twente, Postbus 217, 7500 AE Enschede
telefoon: 053 - 489 2301, fax: 053 - 489 2383, http://www.utwente.nl/itbe

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 12:04:01 von Frank Slootweg

Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
> Frank Slootweg writes:
> >>> Just a minor nit: slrn is not a *M*UA, it's a newsreader.
>
> Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
> >> The difference between news and mail is the size of the receiving
> >> audience.
>
> Frank Slootweg writes:
> > Yup, and the same goes for a newspaper and a letter. Your point being?
>
> That your attempt to distinguish slrn so as to separate it from the
> question of MIME is wrong.

I was doing no such thing. Actually I was doing the exact opposite by
confirming the point(s) which Mark raised ("Not that that invalidates
the (general) point(s) you are making"). Please comment on what people
actually wrote, not on what you think they think.

> >> In the face of gateways which operate in either direction, you must
> >> assume that anything mailed to a mailing list becomes a Usenet posting
> >> somewhere, and anything posted on a Usenet newsgroup becomes mail
> >> somewhere else.
>
> > And exactly who was talking about gateways?
>
> You are, whether you realize it (or like it) or not.

No, I was not. Again, don't think for other people.

> My point which escaped you above is obvious, painfully so. You
> attempt to distinguish your newsreader

It's *not* my newsreader. *'My'* newsreader doesn't have the mentioned
problem, and I *said* so, and asked if slrn can't be configured
similarly.

So may I suggest you read what *is* written and do not 'read' what was
never written.

> attempt to distinguish your newsreader based on the fact that it's
> Usenet-centric, and somehow thereby excuse it for having inadequate
> MIME support.

Again, I did no such thing.

[irrelevant, mostly agreed-upon, stuff deleted]

> > Yeah, I know about the "Why do one thing well if you can do two things
> > badly!?" paradigm. Sorry, but I don't buy it. If someone is happy with a
> > combined client, then good for hir, but to imply that a combined client
> > is (always) superior, is rather silly.
>
> It would be worthwhile to consider how many clients are specific to
> just mail or news these days. Slrn is very nearly alone, even in an
> enumeration of clients, much less in user base.

slrn is by no means alone. There are quite a lot of News-only clients.

> There is a reason for
> that, grounded in the technical similarity between the two,
> particularly considering that Joe Random, who doesn't even know what
> the acronyms POP, IMAP, SMTP, and NNTP are supposed to be about, and
> who barely manages to configure his client for them in the absence of
> that understanding, doesn't care how his bits get from his screen to
> yours, so long as they do. Objectively, by far, Joe Random does not
> *want* two distinct messaging clients. If you wish to preserve this
> irrelevant distinction for your own purposes, the onus is on you to do
> it well, and I would add, to do so in a manner which prevents anyone
> else from having to know, much less care.

This audience does not consist of Joe Randoms. And the distinction is
by no means irrelevant.

But more to the point: Your examples (of combined mail/News clients)
were mostly very bad ones. Gnus and possibly Evolution (I don't have any
knowledge on/experience with that) are the only exceptions. Outlook
Express is about the worst newsreader on the planet and Thunderbird is a
very limited newsreader. OE is also a bad example because Microsofts
pay-client, Outlook, is *not* a combined client.

> > Sorry for my above 'tone', but I kind of dislike silly, patronizing
> > remarks.
>
> It's not patronizing; it's an accurate description of the state of the
> messaging universe, for years upon years now; slrn has not kept pace.
>
> Sorry, if my tone offends you. Until this final paragraph, it was
> merely an even-tempered tone intended for those with an ear tuned to it.

It is patronizing. That you apparently do not even realize that it is
patronizing, makes it even worse.

Bottom line: Use what suits your needs. Others will do the same and
they don't need to be told what's good for them.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 12:11:18 von Frank Slootweg

Mark Crispin wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
> > Joe Random does not care about delivery systems; that is possibly the
> > single biggest reason why combined clients have essentially completely
> > taken over the space of message clients. Joe Random does not want to
> > have to configure and run two distinct programs which, as far as he
> > can tell, do the same thing.
>
> Exactly. As the saying goes, "A difference which makes no difference is
> no difference."
>
> Although some old farts may mourn the demise of an effective difference
> between news and e-mail, only a minority of old farts ever supported the
> preservation of that difference. Far more old farts worked to remove it.
>
> What amazes me is that we're still talking about this issue in 2006.

Well, there *are* differences. Pretending those differences don't
exist or/and are not important or/and can be fully solved for everybody,
doesn't make them go away. *That* is why we (TINW) are still talking
about these issues and will be talking about them for many years to
come.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 12:24:18 von philip

In article ,
Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
>Consider that everything from Gnus to Outlook Express to Evolution to
>Thunderbird does news and mail in a single client program. The days
>of the "mail OR news, pick one" client went the day of the dodo bird a
>decade ago (and for some of us, a whole lot longer ago than that).

Not for me. I see absolutely no point in mixing public discussions with
private correspondence.

Maybe you do, that is your choice. The user interfaces of trn and mh are
completely different, and there are good reasons to keep it that way.

(I have to admit that I'd like to feed my mailing list messages to trn.
Of of these days I'd have hack a private mailing list gateway into
my news server).

--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Re: RFC 2231 and boundary -parameter (Re: AOL is smoking crack.)

am 14.02.2006 12:52:04 von Sam

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 13:10:09 von Karl Kleinpaste

philip@pch.home.cs.vu.nl (Philip Homburg) writes:
> Not for me. I see absolutely no point in mixing public discussions with
> private correspondence.
....
> (I have to admit that I'd like to feed my mailing list messages to trn.
> Of of these days I'd have hack a private mailing list gateway into
> my news server).

As you observe, perhaps without meaning to do so, "public discussion"
is not synonymous with "NNTP". SMTP from one person to one other
person is private, but SMTP to a mailing list has the character of
news. NNTP to a worldwide group obviously is news, but NNTP to a
newsgroup with very restricted readership on a private news server has
the character of private mail. There is a complete combinatoric
taxonomy of "private -vs- public" and "SMTP -vs- NNTP," and all cases
work; the interface which delivers it doesn't matter. So that one
interface can provide all the same functions -- on point, MIME support
-- for any entry in the set: Add a feature for SMTP purposes, and it's
already there for NNTP, too.

So I don't need to feed mailing list content to my news server; my
reading and posting interface gives me the same effect, so that a
group known in my interface as comp.emacs.xemacs.beta (where I receive
xemacs-beta SMTP) is news, as far as I'm concerned. Frankly, most
combined interfaces do this to a certain degree, but many (most?) of
them don't get it quite right because the designers didn't think
through all the implications of that 2x2 taxonomy.

Take the concept of "followup," apply it to email, sic it on mailing
lists. The interface I use makes it an identical function -- the only
place where it matters is that there is one header line's difference
(and that can be hidden), and when I say "send," it picks the suitable
outbound channel, the specifics of which don't matter to the user. As
it happens, it will even do simultaneous "mail to this address while
also posting to that newsgroup" in the very rare case where that's
appropriate.

Just another proof case for a single, well-designed interface that
hides the details, but then by nature provides all the same higher-
level functions, like MIME handling.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 14:44:17 von philip

In article ,
Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
>philip@pch.home.cs.vu.nl (Philip Homburg) writes:
>> Not for me. I see absolutely no point in mixing public discussions with
>> private correspondence.
>...
>> (I have to admit that I'd like to feed my mailing list messages to trn.
>> Of of these days I'd have hack a private mailing list gateway into
>> my news server).
>
>As you observe, perhaps without meaning to do so, "public discussion"
>is not synonymous with "NNTP". SMTP from one person to one other
>person is private, but SMTP to a mailing list has the character of
>news. NNTP to a worldwide group obviously is news, but NNTP to a
>newsgroup with very restricted readership on a private news server has
>the character of private mail.

For me it isn't. Even if a message reaches a small audience, I still
do not consider it private. Private is where I get to pick the
recipients for each individual message.

>There is a complete combinatoric
>taxonomy of "private -vs- public" and "SMTP -vs- NNTP," and all cases
>work; the interface which delivers it doesn't matter. So that one
>interface can provide all the same functions -- on point, MIME support
>-- for any entry in the set: Add a feature for SMTP purposes, and it's
>already there for NNTP, too.

You are right the low level interface does not matter much. However,
I don't consider NNTP a good protocol for point-to-point communication.

So there are actually just three combinations (one-to-one SMTP, one-to-many
SMTP, one-to-many NNTP).

>So I don't need to feed mailing list content to my news server; my
>reading and posting interface gives me the same effect, so that a
>group known in my interface as comp.emacs.xemacs.beta (where I receive
>xemacs-beta SMTP) is news, as far as I'm concerned.

This is limitation of trn. Trn can't deal mailing list messages in
mailboxes. However, in my opinion, NNTP is the right interface between
a news user agent and a public discussion. So, it much better to implement
an NNTP gateway to mailing list mail in a mailbox than trying to add mbox
support to trn.

>Frankly, most
>combined interfaces do this to a certain degree, but many (most?) of
>them don't get it quite right because the designers didn't think
>through all the implications of that 2x2 taxonomy.

The user interfaces of trn and mh are so completely different that I see
no point in trying to make a single program that offers both interfaces.

>Take the concept of "followup," apply it to email, sic it on mailing
>lists. The interface I use makes it an identical function -- the only
>place where it matters is that there is one header line's difference
>(and that can be hidden), and when I say "send," it picks the suitable
>outbound channel, the specifics of which don't matter to the user. As
>it happens, it will even do simultaneous "mail to this address while
>also posting to that newsgroup" in the very rare case where that's
>appropriate.

I think that 'followup' is the most boring part of e-mail and netnews
clients.

The important (for me) is how the systems keep track of what has been done,
how incoming messages are filtered, etc.

>Just another proof case for a single, well-designed interface that
>hides the details, but then by nature provides all the same higher-
>level functions, like MIME handling.

Some common code for rendering MIME is a good idea. But I think that on my
system, trn calls mh to render MIME, so that is taken care of.

--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Re: RFC 2231 and boundary -parameter (Re: AOL is smoking crack.)

am 14.02.2006 16:50:23 von Mark Crispin

On Tue, 14 Feb 2006, Sam wrote:
> Although I can't find anything in RFC 2231 that explicitly prohibits it, RFC
> 2045 (November 1996) precedes RFC 2231 (November 1997). If RFC 2231 modified
> RFC 2046, it should've explicitly stated so.

RFC 2231 updates RFCs 2045, 2047, and 2183; and 2045 is where parameter is
defined. So yes, sadly, it appears that it is permissible to break up the
BOUNDARY parameter as AOL has done.

Nevertheless, I agree with the sentiment that it is absurd to apply 2231
to the BOUNDARY parameter. Furthermore, the practice creates an
incompatibility and non-interoperability problem.

I would support an effort to prohibit the practice in the next revision of
MIME (which has to be soon) and/or restrict 2231 applicability to certain
named parameters.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 18:16:58 von Alan Mackenzie

Karl Kleinpaste wrote on Mon, 13 Feb 2006 18:25:13
-0500:
> "Chris F.A. Johnson" writes:
>> The difference between an individual e-mail and an individual Usenet
>> message may be small, but the differences between their delivery
>> systems is considerable.

> Joe Random does not care about delivery systems; that is possibly the
> single biggest reason why combined clients have essentially completely
> taken over the space of message clients. Joe Random does not want to
> have to configure and run two distinct programs which, as far as he can
> tell, do the same thing.

Who's Joe, here?

This particular Joe, the author of this post, uses two separate clients -
tin for news and pine for mail. That way he is in no danger of posting a
personal email on a newsgroup, an accident that befalls others not
infrequently.

tin is wonderful for News. Its 4-key interface (the four arrow keys are
about all you need for newsreading) is an epitome of UI design. It's
email capabilities are scrappy at best.

pine is pretty good at doing mail. Its news interface is usable, but not
by a lot.

Joe also considers that having news and mail "looking the same" is
psychologically a bad thing. It encourages other Joes to do crazy things
like signing news postings (as well as email).

--
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 18:25:19 von Alan Mackenzie

Mark Crispin wrote on Mon, 13 Feb 2006 16:14:21
-0800:
> On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
>> I have yet to find a single tool that works adequately for both. I
>> use Pine as my mail client, but its news interface is barely
>> tolerable.

> As usual, one's mileage will vary.

Indeed.

> I find Pine to be the only program with a tolerable news interface.

Suprise surprise! ;-)

> Most of the complaints that I have heard about Pine's news interface
> has to do with NNTP servers which are designed to optimize for a
> particular news reader rather than follow the published protocol.

Well, there was the quality of Pine's threading algorithm for news
articles. Maybe that's been fixed, now. There was the little problem
about filling in the From: header appropriately, to which the solution
was to tell the user he was wrong for wanting to do what he wanted to do,
and that there were other clients around if he disagreed. Or something
like that.

> -- Mark --

--
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 14.02.2006 19:13:52 von Alan Mackenzie

Mark Crispin wrote on Mon, 13 Feb 2006 13:24:16
-0800:
> On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Frank Slootweg wrote:
>> Just a minor nit: slrn is not a *M*UA, it's a newsreader [1]. Not
>> that that invalidates the (general) point(s) you are making, but just
>> for correctness.

> slrn is most certainly a "messaging user agent", which is the correct
> expansion of MUA even though many people believe that it is "mail user
> agent."

Possibly, people of good taste have an instinctive revulsion against the
gerund "messaging" of the supposed verb "to message". If it had been
called "message user agent" it might have stuck better, though that seems
much vaguer than "mail user agent".

> -- Mark --

--
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").

Re: RFC 2231 and boundary -parameter (Re: AOL is smoking crack.)

am 16.02.2006 06:41:44 von Kari Hurtta

Mark Crispin writes:

> On Tue, 14 Feb 2006, Sam wrote:
> > Although I can't find anything in RFC 2231 that explicitly prohibits
> > it, RFC 2045 (November 1996) precedes RFC 2231 (November 1997). If
> > RFC 2231 modified RFC 2046, it should've explicitly stated so.
>
> RFC 2231 updates RFCs 2045, 2047, and 2183; and 2045 is where
> parameter is defined. So yes, sadly, it appears that it is
> permissible to break up the BOUNDARY parameter as AOL has done.
>
> Nevertheless, I agree with the sentiment that it is absurd to apply
> 2231 to the BOUNDARY parameter. Furthermore, the practice creates an
> incompatibility and non-interoperability problem.
>
> I would support an effort to prohibit the practice in the next
> revision of MIME (which has to be soon) and/or restrict 2231
> applicability to certain named parameters.

Yes. I select to not accept RFC 2231 encoding for "boundary" and "charset"
-parameters on my MUA.

I do RFC 2231 encoding for "filename" (and user suplied parameters.)

(Also I perhaps little violate specs. Specially I generate two "filaname"
-parameters:
one for shortened ascii only version of file name
that does not use RFC 2231 encoding for "filename"
second for original file name. That uses RFC 2231 encoding
)

> -- Mark --
>
> http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
> Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
> Si vis pacem, para bellum.

/ Kari Hurtta

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 18.02.2006 01:47:49 von inky

you said:

"I've done it already for HTML on my non-earthlink addresses,
with procmail:

:0
* ^Content-Type:.*html
{

#convert HTML to Plain Text, body only

:0 bf
| w3m -dump -cols 80 -T text/html

# rewrite the Content-Type header so that the MUA
# processes the mail as Plain Text, headers only

:0 hf
| formail -I"Content-Type: text/plain"

}"

Got one question for you, how do you get rid of all the html tags and
keep the formatting of the body intact? Also, are you running this on
your own client or on a mail server hosting more than one account?

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 18.02.2006 08:30:34 von Kari Hurtta

"Sam_sirius" writes:

> you said:
>
> "I've done it already for HTML on my non-earthlink addresses,
> with procmail:
>
> :0
> * ^Content-Type:.*html
> {
>
> #convert HTML to Plain Text, body only
>
> :0 bf
> | w3m -dump -cols 80 -T text/html
===
>
> # rewrite the Content-Type header so that the MUA
> # processes the mail as Plain Text, headers only
>
> :0 hf
> | formail -I"Content-Type: text/plain"
>
> }"
>
> Got one question for you, how do you get rid of all the html tags and
> keep the formatting of the body intact? Also, are you running this on
> your own client or on a mail server hosting more than one account?

He is piping it through w3m

( Hmm. If I guess correctly that script does not handle charset -information.)

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 20.02.2006 05:56:35 von Alan Connor

On comp.mail.misc, in <1140223669.293388.250280@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, "Sam_sirius" wrote:
> Path: newsspool2.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink .net!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!newshub.sdsu.edu!po stnews.google.com!g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail
> From: "Sam_sirius"
> Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
> Subject: Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs
> Date: 17 Feb 2006 16:47:49 -0800
> Organization: http://groups.google.com
> Lines: 26
> Message-ID: <1140223669.293388.250280@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
> References: <11uqouh5bfrjg6c@corp.supernews.com> <20060213155348@usenet.piggo.com> <43f09779$0$64789$dbd49001@news.wanadoo.nl>
> NNTP-Posting-Host: 138.88.70.153
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> X-Trace: posting.google.com 1140223680 1337 127.0.0.1 (18 Feb 2006 00:48:00 GMT)
> X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
> NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 00:48:00 +0000 (UTC)
> In-Reply-To:
> User-Agent: G2/0.2
> X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe)
> Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
> Injection-Info: g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=138.88.70.153; posting-account=1OxJxg0AAAAZpIMzbVvuevpNkKnKZHUa
> Xref: news.earthlink.net comp.mail.misc:76555
> X-Received-Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 16:48:01 PST (newsspool2.news.pas.earthlink.net)

http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search
Sam_sirius
Results 1 - 1 of 1 posts in the last year
1 comp.mail.misc

Phukk off, idiot troll.

That's not a suggestion, it is a done deal.

I am not interested in what you have to say. Trolls have no
credibility whatsoever.

[Note: I don't read the posts of "Sam" or his numerous
sockpuppets or his 'friends', nor any responses to them.]

Alan

--
http://home.earthlink.net/~alanconnor/contact.html
Other URLs of possible interest in my headers.

FAQ: Canonical list of questions Beavis refuses to answer (V1.50) (was Re: it is time to reti

am 20.02.2006 15:25:48 von Sam

This is a MIME GnuPG-signed message. If you see this text, it means that
your E-mail or Usenet software does not support MIME signed messages.
The Internet standard for MIME PGP messages, RFC 2015, was published in 1996.
To open this message correctly you will need to install E-mail or Usenet
software that supports modern Internet standards.

--=_mimegpg-commodore.email-scan.com-24393-1140445548-0003
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Usenet Beavis writes:

>
>
>
> http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search
> Sam_sirius
> Results 1 - 1 of 1 posts in the last year

Results 1 - 10 of 23,800 for usenet beavis (0.38 seconds)

You win.

> Phukk off, idiot troll.

Can't stand the competition?

> That's not a suggestion, it is a done deal.

General Custer said something like that, once.

> I am not interested in what you have to say.

Obviously you do, since you bothered to reply.

> Trolls have no
> credibility whatsoever.

Right, Beavis.

> [Note: it's not my fault that I'm a complete dumbass. I was dropped on my
> head as a child. See http://www.pearlgates.net/nanae/kooks/alanconnor for
> more information]
>
> Beavis

FAQ: Canonical list of questions Beavis refuses to answer (V1.50)

This is a canonical list of questions that Beavis never answers. This FAQ is
posted on a semi-regular schedule, as circumstances warrant.

For more information on Beavis, see:

http://www.pearlgates.net/nanae/kooks/alanconnor.shtml

Although Beavis has been posting for a long time, he always remains silent
on the subjects enumerated below. His response, if any, usually consists of
replying to the parent post with a loud proclamation that his Usenet-reading
software runs a magical filter that automatically identifies anyone who's
making fun of him, and hides those offensive posts. For more information
see question #9 below.

============================================================ ================

1) If your Challenge-Response spam filter works so well, why are you munging
your address, when posting to Usenet?

2) If spammers avoid forging real E-mail addresses on spam, then where do
all these bounces everyone reports getting (for spam with their return
address was forged onto) come from?

3) If your Challenge-Response filter is so great, why do you still munge
when posting to Usenet?

4) Do you still believe that rsh is the best solution for remote access?
(http://tinyurl.com/5qqb6)

5) What is your evidence that everyone who disagrees with you, and thinks
that you're a moron, is a spammer?

6) How many different individuals do you believe really post to
comp.mail.misc? What is the evidence for your paranoid belief that everyone,
except you, who posts here is some unknown arch-nemesis of yours?

7) How many times, or how often, do you believe is necessary to announce
that you do not read someone's posts? What is your reason for making these
regularly-scheduled proclamations? Who do you believe is so interested in
keeping track of your Usenet-reading habits?

8) When was the last time you saw Bigfoot (http://tinyurl.com/23r3f)?

9) If your C-R system employs a spam filter so that it won't challenge spam,
then why does any of the mail that passes the filter, and is thusly presumed
not to be spam, need to be challenged?

10) You claim that the software you use to read Usenet magically identifies
any post that makes fun of you. In http://tinyurl.com/3swes you explain
that "What I get in my newsreader is a mock post with fake headers and no
body, except for the first parts of the Subject and From headers."

Since your headers indicate that you use slrn and, as far as anyone knows,
the stock slrn doesn't work that way, is this interesting patch to slrn
available for download anywhere?

11) You regularly post alleged logs of your procmail recipe autodeleting a
bunch of irrelevant mail that you've received. Why, and who exactly do you
believe is interested in your mail logs?

12) How exactly do you "enforce" an "order" to stay out of your mailbox,
supposedly (http://tinyurl.com/cs8jt)? Since you issue this "order" about
every week, or so, apparently nobody wants to follow it. What are you going
to do about it?

13) What's with your fascination with shit? (also http://tinyurl.com/cs8jt)?

14) You complain about some arch-nemesis of yours always posting forged
messages in your name. Can you come up with even a single URL, as an example
of what you're talking about?

15) You always complain about some mythical spammers that pretend to be
spamfighters (http://tinyurl.com/br4td). Who exactly are those people, and
can you post a copy of a spam that you supposedly received from them, that
proves that they're really spammers, and not spamfighters?

--=_mimegpg-commodore.email-scan.com-24393-1140445548-0003
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQBD+dFsx9p3GYHlUOIRAppoAJsFjpkdnhkEsuFT+OcOHto7Iiwv+wCe NXwD
aPoKqV71Pbho9OefSX9JLjs=
=GfQE
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--=_mimegpg-commodore.email-scan.com-24393-1140445548-0003--

Re: FAQ: Canonical list of questions Beavis refuses to answer (V1.50) (was Re: it is time to

am 21.02.2006 00:54:30 von Alan Connor

On comp.mail.misc, in , "Sam" wrote:
> Path: newsspool2.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink .net!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!newshub.sdsu.edu!bo rder1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local01.nntp.d ca.giganews.com!nntp.speakeasy.net!news.speakeasy.net.POSTED !not-for-mail
> NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 08:25:48 -0600
> References: <11uqouh5bfrjg6c@corp.supernews.com> <20060213155348@usenet.piggo.com> <43f09779$0$64789$dbd49001@news.wanadoo.nl> <1140223669.293388.250280@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
> Message-ID:
> X-Mailer: http://www.courier-mta.org/cone/
> From: Sam
> X-PGP-KEY: http://www.courier-mta.org/KEYS.bin
> Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
> Followup-To: alt.usenet.kooks
> Subject: FAQ: Canonical list of questions Beavis refuses to answer (V1.50) (was Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs)
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="=_mimegpg-commodore.email-scan.com-24393-114044554 8-0003"; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"
> Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 08:25:48 -0600
> Lines: 140
> NNTP-Posting-Host: 216.254.115.84
> X-Trace: sv3-ACuBUq2giSVw3FVqDZLlsDfU5S8N2wQYC7CxqGjOd/tI+GL+K51Va/eW YTEVPcrMFJ9t/lyEKq3uE/d!533pULm3Bsls6QAm3S2ubXNC/Y4Ghp1CoPfq +EX7mbS3AELCI0q/BCY6iIyWY1GvK2D0bXXjXq4h!wYFO4cGXxaWsLoFskPS 061Tg13S6YmYm7b+48JBd6UdIkA==
> X-Complaints-To: abuse@speakeasy.net
> X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@speakeasy.net
> X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers
> X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly
> X-Postfilter: 1.3.32
> Xref: news.earthlink.net comp.mail.misc:76593
> X-Received-Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 06:25:49 PST (newsspool2.news.pas.earthlink.net)

I've checked the Archives: No one named 'Beavis' has ever posted
on this group.

Therefore, "Sam" must be talking about someone that most people
are likely to be able to identify.

A search on the Web reveals that 'Beavis' is a cartoon character.

"Sam" expects a cartoon character to respond to a list of
questions.

Doesn't surprise me a bit.

I quit reading "Sam's" articles years ago because they didn't
make any sense. Now it is plain to see that he is simply insane.

Which explains a number of things, like his use of multi-part
mime on a group where everyone else uses plain text, but "Sam"
apparently doesn't even notice.

[Note: I don't read the posts of "Sam" or his numerous
sockpuppets or his 'friends', nor any responses to them.]

Alan

--
http://home.earthlink.net/~alanconnor/contact.html
Other URLs of possible interest in my headers.

Re: FAQ: Canonical list of questions Beavis refuses to answer (V1.50) (was Re: it is time to

am 21.02.2006 01:20:59 von Sam

OT Re: FAQ: Canonical list of questions Beavis refuses to answer (V1.50) (was Re: it is time

am 21.02.2006 02:33:44 von Alan Connor

On comp.mail.misc, in , "Sam" wrote:
> Path: newsspool2.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink .net!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!newshub.sdsu.edu!bo rder1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local01.nntp.d ca.giganews.com!nntp.speakeasy.net!news.speakeasy.net.POSTED !not-for-mail
> NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 18:20:59 -0600
> References: <11uqouh5bfrjg6c@corp.supernews.com> <20060213155348@usenet.piggo.com> <43f09779$0$64789$dbd49001@news.wanadoo.nl> <1140223669.293388.250280@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
> Message-ID:
> X-Mailer: http://www.courier-mta.org/cone/
> From: Sam
> X-PGP-KEY: http://www.courier-mta.org/KEYS.bin
> Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
> Followup-To: alt.usenet.kooks
> Subject: Re: FAQ: Canonical list of questions Beavis refuses to answer (V1.50) (was Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs)
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="=_mimegpg-commodore.email-scan.com-549-1140481259- 0003"; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"
> Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 18:20:59 -0600
> Lines: 125
> NNTP-Posting-Host: 216.254.115.84
> X-Trace: sv3-oHSkYLe/5+6mIPqU3YiEapS92tPk7yMwArg2fgBsX0bpWUwk009LtXKp gTxl/OO1HJN026zG0kMWb2z!JVZ9fPY7GOCwJFzzNBasC+mTftwaCPm/uJ/9 szjzY5V01KGcXrXIB60Cplmg/RJVCLyO3XsKMgtK!Dpajc/TKK/QGlCviMa8 VRuEKDjqrKs9ANrKMTiNntA==
> X-Complaints-To: abuse@speakeasy.net
> X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@speakeasy.net
> X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers
> X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly
> X-Postfilter: 1.3.32
> Xref: news.earthlink.net comp.mail.misc:76605
> X-Received-Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 16:20:59 PST (newsspool2.news.pas.earthlink.net)

"Sam"?

You've posted that list of questions (I assume that there
actually is a list of questions...) to 'Beavis' dozens of
times, and 'he' has never answered.

Maybe if 'Beavis' won't answer your questions, you could try
asking 'Donald Duck' or 'Wile E. Coyote'.

Once again, I have ignored your followup to alt.usenet.kooks.
I realize that you miss your fellow kooks, but it is not an
appropriate crosspost for this group.

Really. You'd realize that if you just took a break from
talking to your cartoon buddies and thought about it for
a few seconds.

[Note: I don't read the posts of "Sam" or his numerous
sockpuppets or his 'friends', nor any responses to them.]

Alan

--
http://home.earthlink.net/~alanconnor/contact.html
see also: links.html and newsfilter.html
Other URLs of possible interest in my headers.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 21.02.2006 02:37:23 von inky

Kari Hurtta said:

"He is piping it through w3m

( Hmm. If I guess correctly that script does not handle charset
-information.)"

Right. I have tried this on a number of occassions with other scripts
and always ended up with mail that looked like crap. I was wondering
if he could shed any light on the matter.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 21.02.2006 02:45:25 von inky

Alan Connor said:

"Phukk off, idiot troll.

That's not a suggestion, it is a done deal.

I am not interested in what you have to say. Trolls have no
credibility whatsoever."

Wow such hostility! All I ask was some questions to see what was your
secret. As I said to another poster, when I have run scripts designed
to strip out html from email, I always ended up with crappy formatted
mail. Was hoping for something more educational from you, but alas I
was wrong. If you are going to be hostile, don't bother answering you
ras bumbaclot!

Re: OT Re: FAQ: Canonical list of questions Beavis refuses to answer (V1.50) (was Re: it is t

am 21.02.2006 02:56:39 von Sam

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 21.02.2006 05:42:35 von Mark Crispin

On Mon, 20 Feb 2006, Sam_sirius wrote:
> Wow such hostility! All I ask was some questions to see what was your
> secret. As I said to another poster, when I have run scripts designed
> to strip out html from email, I always ended up with crappy formatted
> mail. Was hoping for something more educational from you, but alas I
> was wrong. If you are going to be hostile, don't bother answering you
> ras bumbaclot!

As friendly advice: it is best not to pay that individual any attention.
Do not believe any technical statements made by him. Above all, whatever
you do, do not respond to him.

To answer your original question: your best bet to neutralize HTML email
is to use a text-based MUA (such as Pine) which has a basic built-in HTML
interpreter that will not do evil things (such as open web bugs). I am
most familiar with Pine :-) but it's likely that Pine's competitors have
similar functionality.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 22.02.2006 03:56:24 von inky

Mark Crispin said:

"As friendly advice: it is best not to pay that individual any
attention.
Do not believe any technical statements made by him. Above all,
whatever
you do, do not respond to him."

Noted. I guess I am going to have to learn how to use Pine. Oh, and
thanks for the warning, I did a search on that individual and, boy,
does he have quite a history. I can see why Sam calls him Beavis. His
posts follow have the following pattern,

"I am the great Cornholio, my bunghole will now speak!

I use Challenge/Response for my mailbox!

Are you threatening me?!

Where I come from, we have no bunghole."

Yep. That pretty much say's it all. Say, are you the same guy that
wrote the RFC for IMAP4? I had a bitch of a time trying to
troubleshoot some problem I had with a Groupwise IMAP server (lets just
say that Novell's docs on this are not too good) and that RFC came in
really handy.

Re: it is time to retire non-MIME MUAs

am 22.02.2006 05:41:33 von Mark Crispin

On Tue, 21 Feb 2006, Sam_sirius wrote:
> Say, are you the same guy that
> wrote the RFC for IMAP4?

Yup. For that matter, I invented IMAP in 1985-6. I've also had my hand
in most of the other email-related specifications. It's been a "long,
strange trip" ...

> I had a bitch of a time trying to
> troubleshoot some problem I had with a Groupwise IMAP server (lets just
> say that Novell's docs on this are not too good) and that RFC came in
> really handy.

I'm glad that it was useful. All due condolences with having to deal with
Groupwise.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.