> I wonder, could this be made something which could
> be a changeable list default?  For example, if the list has Attachments= No
> the default is GETPOST is always NOMIME

There are two main reasons why one would want individual messages returned in MIME format. The first and most compelling is if attachments are included. Your choices are then MIME or garbage, which is not much of a choice, but I agree that this is not applicable with "Attachments= No". But you could also want the messages in MIME format so that you can process them as regular messages with your e-mail program. This way you can forward relevant postings to third parties, reply to the original poster quoting the text, save messages in mail folders for future reference, etc. This is likely to vary from one subscriber to another, so it does not make sense to tie it to a global setting like "Attachments= No".

I do not claim to have statistics about the percentage of users on "Attachments= No" lists who have INDEX subscriptions and use the messages in this or that way, but I am probably one of the most old fashioned e-mail users you will find. I still read and write most of my e-mail from a mainframe, using a mail client I wrote myself 12 years ago and that does not know anything about MIME. Good luck infecting that with a virus ;-) But I also use Outlook. Initially it was just a way to open contracts and spreadsheets with financial reports - a necessary evil. But I quickly switched to Outlook for most of the mailing lists I subscribe to, because I can have the messages automatically moved to a folder and highlighted in a variety of colours depending on what the list is about and so on (I thought of having one folder per list, but it would take too much clicking to read all my list mail). The alternative would have been a DIGEST subscription on the mainframe, but I don't like DIGEST subscriptions for lists such as this one because they only come once a day, not necessarily at the time when, on that particular day, I happen to be able to take a break and read the list. A separate folder in my Outlook mailbox provided a lot more flexibility. Other than that, I only use Outlook when I have to, because POP is not really compatible with my work habits, and Outlook won't do filtering on IMAP (for no reason that I can understand).

Anyway, why would I get an INDEX subscription? Well, I am the guy who came up with the INDEX subscription, so it is a safe bet that I like it. I just like the summary better than the digest TOC. A message with a subject of interest is a lot less interesting if it comes from one of the usual flamers, especially if it is 314 lines long. If on the average I only read 3 of the 50 daily messages, I can work much more efficiently with an INDEX subcription. But if I just want to *read* the messages, I can use an HTML INDEX and simply click on the messages I am interested in. It will work pretty much like any major paper's daily newsletter (guess who spent a lot of time around 1995-97 talking newspapers into not including the whole text of every article and making a digest-like newsletter, when they should be aiming for an index-like newsletter?) The only reason to go through the hassle of replying and deleting most of the quoted text so that I can get the messages e-mailed to me would be to archive them, forward them, reply to them, or something like that. Not simply read them - there are better tools for that. And if I am going to forward or reply, I need the messages in MIME format.

I do not presume to be representative of the average INDEX subscriber, but I would need some convincing evidence in order to believe that the overwhelming majority of INDEX subscribers order postings to read and discard them, in which case I would agree that, with most e-mail programs, NOMIME is going to be easier and should then be the default if attachments are not allowed on the list.

There is no huge technical obstacle to tying the default to the MIME subscription option, but this is not really what this option was designed for. If an option does two things, you inevitably end up with situations where you need it to be both on and off. Adding a new option means a lot of hassle (web interface, manuals, user confusion at the growing number of obscure options, etc). We decided a long time ago to stop adding options to the mainstream functions (things that are shown to subscribers and that they may have to learn) unless there is a really good reason, because it could make the product too daunting. It already has the most options and features in the market, which is both good and bad.

The posting numbers cannot usefully be shown when GETPOST uses MIME format. They would have to be added as a comment field to the RFC822 header, at which point almost nobody would be able to see them without using advanced functions of their mail program and wading through a screenful of "Received:" lines. And I don't understand what you need them so badly for. If you really, really need to find the number of a particular posting, all you have to do is look it up in the index you ordered the message from, or make a search. There is just no way to make it conveniently available in a MIME digest.

  Eric