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.