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[docbook-apps] MIME Mail Mystery ... I can't think of an "M" word for Solved


It is, in fact, a bug in the way the OASIS list software is processing
the messages. Basically, some mail clients, notably mine, omit headers
that aren't necessary. So, since the first section of my message is in
plain text, and since text/plain is the default content type, my
client sends:

  SomeHeaders: with content

  -=-=the-MIME-boundary=

  The first part.

The broken list handling software, maybe it's ezmlm[1]?, apparently
gets confused by the fact that it has no headers associated with that
boundary and so it throws the boundary away. At this point, the message
is broken MIME and it's DOA downstream.

If instead I send the redundant header:

  SomeHeaders: with content

  -=-=the-MIME-boundary=
  Content-type: text/plain

  The first part.

as this message does, the list processor doesn't screw up. Fellow gnus
enthusiasts, in the short term, you want to put the following lines in
your .gnus file:

  ;; Workaround bug in ezmlm and perhaps other processors
  (setq mml-insert-mime-headers-always t)

I'm generally opposed to relying on default values, so maybe you want
to leave it that way in the long term as well.

Jeff, I hope this provides enough information for you to find and
replace the buggy software on your end. You might start by looking at
the way the chairs list is setup, since messages go to that list even
when all the headers are missing, there is clearly something different
in the way that it is setup. In any event, I hope this helps.

And I hope you'll never see another "empty message" from me!

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

[1] http://www.csi.hu/mw/ezmlm-idx_mimeremove_bug.txt

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | Old and young, we are all on our
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | last cruise.--Robert Louis
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | Stevenson

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