Hi,

We've seen the disappearing-banner problem here, and the explanation is
quite simple (IMHO):  listserv does not take MIME boundaries into account
when appending banners.  A message with attachments will typically be
MIME-encoded, which can be described as follows:

   Message header with MIME information

  [anything here is ignored]
   --Starting MIME boundary
   Message text (HTML or plain)
   --Another MIME boundary, maybe
   Another message component, maybe
   --Ending MIME boundary--
   [anything here is ignored]

The listserver simply appends the banner to the message, where it is ignored
by the mail client.  If the listserver were smart it would recognize that
the message is MIME-encoded and would add the banner correctly:

   ...
   --New MIME boundary appended by listserv
   Banner appended by listserv
   --Ending MIME boundary--

I would argue that this is a logic deficiency that should be repaired.

Henri Bulterman, The MITRE Corporation



Kathy Montgomery wrote:
>
> Well, I use Netscape, Outlook, and Pine -- if you can tell me how to do
> this in one of those, that would be swell. :)  However, I have not yet
> been able to see the banners when viewing the message in either HTML or
> plain text format, and the banner does not appear in either the HTML or
> the plain text part of the message in the web archives.
>
> - Kathy
>
> Kevin Parris wrote:
>       I've noticed that sometimes the mail reader does not show me
>       a bottom banner when the message is mixed HTML, but the
>       banner is present in the message though.  Does your mail
>       reader give you an option to view the messages in a 'raw'
>       format?
>
>       >>> [log in to unmask] 05/16/01 01:34PM >>>
>       I have a list for which postings are not getting the top or
>       bottom banners
>       attached at all.  Both of the banners exist, and the bottom
>       banner was
>       attached successfully to the first list posting (there was no
>       top banner
>       at the time).  No posting since has been "bannered" (there
>       have only been
>       two or three).