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

[Joel Reicher]

> > 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.

Then why don't you feel the same way about mhbuild? My problem with
send handling attachment headers is that it's inconsistent with the use
of mhbuild. If MIME were being done from scratch, I might agree with you.

> Also, I don't see where the attachment handling mods fail.  They treat anythi
> ng
> in the "body" of the message as part 1 regardless of what it is which makes
> sense to me.

Then perhaps the failure is a bug.

Compose a message with an mhbuild directive in it. The simplest example
of this which is not just another file attachment is forwarding a message.
At the whatnow prompt, attach a file and run the message through mhbuild.
The order doesn't matter. Now send the file.

When send uses mhbuild to handle the attachment header, mhbuild will
object to the message headers already being MIME-fied. This also
demonstrates my more "philosophical" objection that mhbuild is being used
in two different places.

> > 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?

Because that's what already happens. As I said earlier, it's a matter of
consistency. automimeproc is the mechanism that exists to invoke mhbuild
automatically.

Cheers,

        - Joel