Re: [exim] tnef attachments

Alan J. 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.

It is how the Microsoft Outlook client works. In MS Outlook, the
RTF setting is not really RTF, it is Outlook-RTF which is something
entirely different, and only readable by hacked up MUA's and
MS Outlook. And, this is the 'fix' that MS tells you to use.

> On top of that you have all the weaknesses that HTML-format email is
> notorious for, including privacy intrusions and security loopholes.

The MS Outlook RTF format is not more 'secure' than HTML-format.

> > 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.

Again, it is how the MS Outlook-RTF format works, the proprietary RTF
format is a packaging, but it is not standard MIME, nor is it meant
for anything else but MS Outlook clients.

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