Re: Intelligence in standards-based software

--On Thursday, May 3, 2001 23:06 -0700 ned.freed@mrochek.com wrote:
> Given that the text in RFC 1766 about this approach has been dropped in
> RFC 3066 due to lack of interest on the part of implementors, I see no
> chance of adding it to MIME itself during a move from draft to full
> standard.

I concur.  However, I think the text in RFC 2046 could be clarified to 
reflect field experience with multipart/alternative better.  It's certainly 
helpful in practice for a multipart/alternative viewer to give the user the 
option to view the different alternatives.  Indeed, I frequently prefer the 
plain text 1st part to ransom-letter HTML in the 2nd part.

The bottom line is that a user's preference doesn't necessarily align with 
the order selected by the originating software.

		- Chris