> In casy anyone is wondering why I would prefer the earlier method,  in
> these days of rampant viri that disguise thier source,  I wouldn't open
> an attachment from my mother unless she told me personally that it was
> good.

Actually, my father sends me a handful of viruses every other week, so I'm not sure I would trust him to determine whether an attachment is virus-free ;-)

Anyway, with the new format, the first text part is extracted and echoed to the message LISTSERV is sending you. In addition, the entire original message is included as an attachment. Depending on your mail client, you will either see two blocks of text (the request from LISTSERV and the text of the original message) plus a message attachment, or a text attachment and a message attachment. The text attachment has been formatted by LISTSERV and is always text (usually plain text, HTML if there was no plain text in the message). Most mail clients will show you the type of this attachment, and plain text is always safe to open. The attached message can be anything and may not be safe to open. If the LISTSERV host has anti-virus support, anything LISTSERV forwards to the editor has already been scanned for viruses. This is not 100% safe, in particular there is a window of a few hours between the first time a new virus is sent and the time it becomes known to the anti-virus system, but it does provide significant protection.

On an old-fashioned list where attachments are only sent exceptionally, you can decide whether to approve the message based on the safe plain text attachment (which many mail clients will open automatically). You can also identify spam and viruses easily from the text, without having to open the attachment. On a list whose purpose is to circulate eg Excel spreadsheets with business reports or proposals, you can then open the attachment and look at the spreadsheet if this is necessary to decide whether to approve or not. With NOMIME, such lists were impossible to moderate since all you saw was base64 garbage.

  Eric