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Use of multipart/alternative, inside (a) or outside (b) of
multipart/related? (see blurb below taken from our IETF mtg minutes)
The POP3/IMAP client from Lotus/cc:Mail will be doing (a) on email msg
composition.
I wanted to confirm my understanding of the concensus reached by the email
vendors in attendance. I recall most if not all of us said we would be doing
choice (a) for email content generation. Could you please reply with what your
products' plans are?
Thanks.
Linda Welsh
Lotus Development
Appendix B: more about the multipart/alternative issue
(a) Inside the "Content-Type Multipart/related", body parts
can be specified with "Content-Type: Text/plain" as the first
choice, and "Content-Type: Text/HTML" as the second choice:
Content-Type: Multipart/related;
type=3DMULTIPART/ALTERNATIVE =
Content-Type: MULTIPART/ALTERNATIVE
Content-Type: Text/plain
... plain text version of the document for recipients
whose mailers cannot handle Text/HTML ...
Content-Type: Text/HTML; charset=3DUS&endash;ASCII
... text of the HTML document ...
Content-Type: Image/GIF
... a body part, to which the HTML document has a link ...
(b) Outside the multipart/related:
Content-Type: Multipart/alternative
Content-type: Text/plain
... plain text version of the document for recipients
whose mailers cannot handle Text/HTML ...
Content-Type: Multipart/related; type=3DText/HTML =
Content-Type: Text/HTML; charset=3DUS&endash;ASCII
... text of the HTML document ...
Content-Type: Image/GIF
... a body part, to which the HTML text has a link
When choosing between these two methods of employing
multipart/alternative, note the following:
(1) Clients which do not support Multipart/related, and which thus
will interpret it as Multipart/mixed, will with choice (a) display
the inline objects. Thus, a recipient whose mailer can handle
Image/gif but not multipart/related will still be shown the
images, they will not be suppressed by being inside a suppressed
branch of the Multipart/alternative.
(2) Choice (b) will not show inline images in the Multipart/Related,
unless this information is repeated in both branches of the
Multipart/Alternative.
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