Re: [exim] tnef attachments

On 12/9/2004 14:55, "Alan J. Flavell" <a.flavell@???> wrote:

> On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, John W. Baxter wrote:
>
>> You could try to talk the Outlook users into switching their setting
>> for the format of styled messages from RTF to HTML.
>
> I don't mean to seem stroppy, but what on *Earth* do you hope to gain
> from that? RTF is a reasonably documented - even if proprietary -
> format for word-processor data. HTML is something that /aims/ to be
> totally different, and MS's abuse of quasi-HTML pretending to be a
> word-processor format could be one of the worst things that ever
> happened to the web - by volume if not by weight, anyway.
>
> On top of that you have all the weaknesses that HTML-format email is
> notorious for, including privacy intrusions and security loopholes.
>
>> You have so many that seems unlikely to work, however.
>
> I really didn't want to get involved in this, but...
>
> Not only is it unlikely to work, but if it's a solution to anything,
> it's to a problem at a different conceptual level. As I understand it
> TNEF format is effectively a packaging (somewhat analogous to MIME),
> rather than being an application-level format. So promoting a
> different application-level format doesn't seem to me to be the
> answer. Sorry to seem so contrary.
>

Oops...my memory was likely faulty. The actual case we had was an Outlook
sender attaching a PDF file to a message, and our mail processing (and other
people's as well) corrupting it. When Outlook was sending RTF, the PDF
attachment was encoded in broken Quoted-Printable. When Outlook was sending
HTML, the attachment was encoded in correct Base64.

I was thinking that the switch to HTML from RTF would ditch the tnef and
winmail.dat stuff...I no longer know whether I think that or not. (And the
only Outlook I have readily available is the boss's, which I'll leave
alone.)

--John