[pmmail-list] How to modify text in a received message?

[Larry Alkoff]

On Mon, 05 Jul 2004 12:52:05 -0700, Tim Roberts wrote:

>Larry Alkoff wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 3 Jul 2004 11:44:38 -0700, timr@probo.com wrote:
>>  
>>
>>>Is is possible the message is multipart/alternative with both a text/plain
>>>and a text/html section?  If you modify the human-readable text in
>>>text/plain, it won't have any affect on PMMail's preview, which shows 
>>>the text/html part.
>>>-- 
>>>    
>>>
>>
>>You are both absolutely right.  The message is apparently encoded in  MIME plus there is an HTML  portion.
>>I just copy/pasted my small edit (email ID and password) into the HTML part and it came right up.
>>
>>If I understand this correctly, the MIME portion was actually in plain text.
>>I have included the message for your inspection and comment as to which portion is which.
>>Because I am getting error messages each time I send with the message either attached
>>or included I have zipped it up.
>>
>>I'm particularly interested in how the boundry lines work.  There seem to be too many.
>>
>>My comments in the attached email begin with "lba:"  - not the quotes.
>>
>>I am under the impression that PMMail can not display MIME.  But this was just text so I'm confused.
>>  
>>
>
>No, PMMail knows how to parse a MIME message.  What is DOESN'T do well 
>is display HTML.
>
>MIME is just a way to allow a single e-mail message to have multiple 
>"parts", and to identify those "parts" so the message can be 
>meaningfully rendered at the other end.  Each part has, among other 
>things, a Content-Type header that tells what that part contains.  The 
>simplest MIME messages have, for example, "Content-Type: text/plain" in 
>the message header.  Such a message contains no subparts and no 
>boundaries: just plain text.
>
>The root type of your message is multipart/alternative.  The "multipart" 
>says that the message contains multiple sub-parts, each of which will 
>have its own type.  Each part is preceded by a boundary string, 
>identified in the root Content-Type header.  In your message, there are 
>two sub-parts: one is text/plain, one is text/html.  The "alternative" 
>part of the root type says that both of these parts contain the same 
>message information, just rendered in different ways.  Thus, your mail 
>program can choose which one to display.  If the mailer can handle HTML, 
>and the user has asked to see HTML, it will render the text/html part 
>and ignore the text/plain part.  If the milaer cannot do HTML or the 
>user has suppressed it, it will render the text/plain part and ignore 
>the other.
>
>Finally, there is one final boundary line with a special terminator flag 
>at the very end of the message.
>
>Note that the subparts can be nested. That is, one subpart of a 
>multipart message can itself be multipart.  It will define a brand-new 
>boundary string for ITS sub-parts, each of which could again be 
>multipart.  There is an e-mail test case for the MIME RFC (1521) that 
>contains 40 or 50 subparts of various kinds, nested in various 
>complicated ways, all designed to break wimpy mailers.
>
>-- 
>- Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com


Tim thank you very much for your lucid explanation of how MIME works.
Finally I have a pretty good understanding of it.

I've changed PMMail in 
Account | Properties | Preferences | uncheck View HTML part of a message when available
to not view HTML if there is an alternative which should make the messages appear as plain text - mostly.

Thanks again for your help.

Larry Alkoff



Larry Alkoff N2LA - Austin TX


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