On Fri, 22 Sep 2000 [log in to unmask] wrote: + Note that technically, it's *very* hard to delete a bodypart *and* insert + a notation into the *body* and have it Do The Right Thing. Placing the + text before the first part or after the last part will probably be invisible + to a MIME-aware mail program (that's where a lot of things put their + "This message is in MIME format - if you see this text, consider upgrading" + warnings). Yep. That's one of the reasons I have exmh set to always show that pre-amble ;-) + Putting it into an existing bodypart is dangerous - it may not even be + a text/plain (users may object to their spreadsheet being corrupted by + insertion of arbitrary data. Or it may be a multipart/signed like this + one, where insertion of data may result in invalidating a digital signature. Also true (and especially the multipart/signed part but that's a completely different story ;-). However, the basic assumption with both the attachment removal and optionally adding a small note in what could be called the 'main message' (practically speaking (at least according to the way most user agents treat a MIME-message) the first text/plain part, if any) is that on behalf of the list-owner the message is modified anyway. Whether that is by adding a short trailer or by adding a note about a completely removed body part is more or less the same. A list owner shouldn't even think about options that modify the bodyparts when it is expected and encouraged to send digitally signed messages for example. In the case the list-owner decides to 'modify' the message all transparency-assumptions (what goes in must come out) disappear. The list has become something where you send mail to and on the other side something completely different appears (which by all means can be a good thing, it just isn't transparent and one has to be carefull about what is being sent to such a list). And in that case I prefer to know (as a recipient) that the message has been modified. With trailers that is obvious, with the removal of body-parts (attachment-stripping) but passing the stripped message that's not obvious (current implementation). + ON the other hand, I'd welcome Listserv adding a header to the main + RFC822 headers of the form: + + X-Modified: A application/whatever of NN,NNN bytes was removed by listserv@NODE + + or some similar. This has the same dis-advantage as putting a note in the pre-amble, most if not all user agents don't show these headers by default and the recipient has to do some work to see them, many of them won't even bother I guess. Anyway, given the fact that there is an option to remove selected body-parts and someone one day might decide to add a warning somewhere I would prefer either the Pine-method (replacing the parts with a text/plain body part with the note) or putting them in the first text/plain (and if there isn't one, create one). The result is in both cases a completely different message and care should be taken that the outcome is still a valid MIME-structure but of course that was the intention of the attachment stripping anyway ;-) Xander