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Not enough...read on
Authored by: jeremyp on Oct 20, '04 04:26:32PM

It's not a bug in Apple Mail. When you do this, the mail gets encoded as a three part multipart MIME message - bit of text - attachment - more text. Outlook just isn't clever enough to figure it out.

BTW I never bother setting the the "send windows friendly attachment" option and I don't get complaints from Windows users about not being able to read them. I just assumed that the resource fork gets stripped out and replaced with MIME headers.



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Not enough...read on
Authored by: mgarrfl on Oct 21, '04 09:09:10AM

Is there a way to send embedded attachments to windows users???
Who is not supporting a standard???

When I send embedded pics, the text turns into ATTXXXX.txt files which are a pain for them to read....



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It's a bug, of course.
Authored by: osxpounder on Oct 21, '04 02:58:47PM

If you drag an attachment into your Mail, and there is text after it, and that text becomes separated somehow on the receiving end, then ... it's a bug. The technical reasons why and wherefore don't matter. What matters is the result.

I work with a lot of PC users, and our office uses GroupWise. I found that unless I put attachments after all the text, GroupWise users would not receive anything after the attachment. It would look, to them, as if my attachment was the last thing in my message.

That's a bug. No one should have to learn or remember to treat Mail differently because it handles attachments differently. If you drag an attachment into your Mail, doing so shouldn't interfere with the text of your message, for any reason, ever. They are called attachments because they are supposed to be attached, not included, enclosed, mixed in, or anything else other than attached. They are supposed to attach to an email, not interfere with that email in any way.

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osxpounder



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Supporting standards...
Authored by: MattHaffner on Oct 23, '04 11:00:45PM

"That's a bug."

In the recipients' mail client(s), which probably claim(s) to be MIME compliant. Yes.

MIME is simple. A client that is not supporting multipart MIME or that supports it in a way that only displays the text of the first text part is the buggy part of the connection here. Not Mail.app.

In the case of a e-mail with a graphical element "attached" in the middle, there is nothing special about the 1st or 3rd (or any) text parts. They should be displayed (or offered to be displayed), on-screen in any mail client that conforms to the MIME *standard* (RFC-2049). What happens to the 2nd, non-text part is completely up to the client, although it has to at least notify the user that it exists (and should probably be able to at least save it).

The notion of an "attachment" coming at the end of a message is one based on our history of using text-based e-mail clients. The underlying standard that encodes them doesn't have that barrier, however. Any modern e-mail client shouldn't either.



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