> If the  majority of your users  have a sophisticated mail  interface, you
> should  configure your  local  lists  to have  FULL  headers as  default.
> Changing the SHORT  headers designed for PROFS, ALL-IN-1  and PC packages
> which just  dump the whole headers  at you without processing  to include
> the user-frightening MIME fields is simply not the correct way to address
> the problem.
>   Eric
 
I'm afraid I disagree. The only crucial part of a MIME message
that is not part of the body of the message is the MIME-Version:
header, which is pretty innocuous compared to what the body of
the message looks like. LISTSERV currently passes the body of the
message through unscathed, but removes the MIME-Version header if
SHORT headers are selected, thus rendering the rest of the
message useless since it can no longer be detected as a
MIME-formatted message (see the MIME RFC for the requirements for
a minimally-conformant MIME implementation).
 
Passing the MIME-Version header through the SHORT header filter
is low-impact to users -- they're going to see the body part
gibberish anyway, and it'd be nice if they had a chance of
getting it correctly interpreted. PROFS and All-in-1 won't know
what to do with it and will simply ignore it, but many of the PC
packages now understand MIME even if the users don't know it.
Like it or not, MIME is here, and is seeing increasing use. PMDF
produces MIME messages by default, and even sendmail is becoming
MIME-aware in v8. Having the _default_ environment cripple or
munge valid MIME messages by removing the MIME-Version and
Content-type headers is *not* a good thing. I think you might
want to reconsider, or at least consider a feature for
LISTSERV-TCP that permits passing these headers unmolested in the
SHORT form.