[JDEV] MIME, was My evil plans for a client.

[Vivre Draco]

On 8 Aug 99,, arh14 at cornell.edu sounded off on Re: [JDEV] My evil plans for a clie:

> Anyway, it would be easy to send all MIME messages as several
> messages.  The plain text part would come first, then you could
> cancel any subsequent ones you want (Foo is sending you an
> Elephant.attach, do you accept?). 

   This is *slightly* different than what Scott said. Attached files 
for the purposes of transfer I have no problem with (though I agree 
with Scott we also need a CTCP protocol for doing things like this 
directly). He implied having messages with imbedded background music. 
Very different principle, though I suppose it would probably be 
implemented similarly.

> > >    If you do this, their damned better be an option so not only do I=20
> > > not have to listen to all the shit ppl attach, I don't even have to=20
> > > waste time downloading it.
> 
> Why wouldn't there be?  First of all you would have to accept the
> download, and then play the file. 

   With email you can't choose to only download part of a mime 
message (or at least I can't in the program I use and have never 
heard of anyone doing so), so I had no reason to think it would be 
implemented differently, or even feasible to implement differently, 
with Jabber.

> Anyway, why would your friends send you random junk if they knew
> you hated it? 

   I've known plenty of perfectly nice people on email lists who sent 
messages in HTML with graphics attached because they couldn't find 
the option in their mail program to turn off "stationary" or 
whatever. Sooner or later someone always instructed them how to fix 
it, but in the meantime...

> > Of course there will. One could use basic mailcap's that had no support for
> > beyond basic text. My plans for my client is to actually have a simple
> > interface that modifies the mailcap. "Disable Active Content" anyone?
> 
> Dunno exactly what mailcap is *<|:(

   Niether do I, actually... *looks at Scott expectantly*

> > >    Ugh... If Jabber messages get turned into webpages, with all the=20
> > > crap lamers put on their pages -- useless midis, animated gifs, etc --
> > > I'll stick with ICQ.
> 
> Well, the solution is simple.  Don't make Jabber buddies with
> lamers.  

   LOL! You have a point there :) But unfortunately, it's not so easy 
to implement... I know plenty of otherwise cool ppl who suffer 
serious lapses of taste in certain areas (one of my friends' 
homepages iS wRiTtEn LiKe ThIs, if that tells you anything). And I'm 
sure there'll be Jabber clients that support automatic inclusion of 
your favorite wav, favorite bitmap, and what have you... And not only 
do I not want to rely on my friends to remember to turn off their 
default crap every time they send me a message (or to set their 
client to turn it off when they send me messages, for that matter), 
they shouldn't have to -- And as long as mime is implemented such 
that I don't have to download the stuff, they won't have to.

--
"The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, 
 but it's echo lasts a great deal longer." 
--Unknown 

Copyright 1999 Vivre Draco (cfc at paganpaths.org)
excelsior ad infinitum -- http://www.paganpaths.org/~cfc/