Re: [Nmh-workers] Should attachment header handling be in send?

[Jon Steinhart]

> Sorry if I'm about to rehash an old argument, but I'm only just now
> coming to grips with Jon's 2002 attachment handling mods. I wasn't
> even aware of them before.

Nothing to rehash; when I proposed the attachment handling mods a while back
it was met with silence.  There was no debate at the time.

> Anyway, I'm worried that it is "send" handling the attachment
> headers. There are reasons other than attaching files for building a
> MIME message, and mhbuild could be called before send. As far as I can
> see, the attachment handling mods fail in this situation.

I don't see anything wrong with "send" doing the work.  It's the only logical
place for it, and in my opinion, is really no different than having it expand
aliases and such.

Also, I don't see where the attachment handling mods fail.  They treat anything
in the "body" of the message as part 1 regardless of what it is which makes
sense to me.
 
> Wouldn't it make more sense if mhbuild was given the job of preprocessing
> its own composition drafts if they contain attachment headers? I can't
> see the downside to that, and it would fit the new attachment handling
> into the existing MIME composition workflow more correctly, I think.

I don't understand this.  I suppose that you could add functionality to
mhbuild so that it recognizes attachment headers but am not sure why you'd
want to do so.  Why would a user want to have to invoke mhbuild when it can
be done automatically?

It would help this discussion if you could give real examples of situations
in which you'd want to be running mhbuild and using the new attachment code
together, and where it breaks.

Jon