Re: Intelligence in standards-based software

> > The problem is that if I send a message in the format
> > "multipart/alternative" with different languages in the
> > different body parts, then most major mailers will
> > only show the recipient one of the body parts, not
> > selected based on the language preferences of the
> > recipient, and will not even tell the recipient that
> > there are other body parts.

> right.  but this is a problem inherent in any new feature - you can
> hardly expect existing user agents to do something reasonable with
> a construct that has never been tried before.

> defining a new content-type doesn't help this problem much, if at
> all - either the recipient's mailer *still* refuses to show the
> text, or the mailer treats as multipart/mixed and displays all of the
> parts (which can be quite annoying).  neither is satisfactory.

Exactly. We defined something in a standard that hasn't been implemented by
user agents to your satisfaction, and now you hope to solve this problem by
defining something that's essentially the same but labelled differently. I'm
sorry, but I fail to see any reason why multipart/choices will work out any
better in this regard. Standards can only do so much.

				Ned

Received on Thursday, 3 May 2001 19:24:32 UTC