From: Aron Roberts (aron@socrates.berkeley.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 19 2002 - 10:58:05 PST
In the message "[MAGNet] Eudora content-type", dated 2002-11-19, Mark
D. Laws wrote:
>I am using Eudora 5.2 on MacOS 10.2 and trying to send a message to
>an application users talk list.
>
>It keeps bouncing back with this message:
>
>Failed to deliver to '<WebDNA-Talk@talk.smithmicro.com>'
>LIST module(list WebDNA-Talk@talk.smithmicro.com) reports:
> Your message cannot be posted.
> It has the content-type: multipart/alternative,
> and this list accepts text only
When you send e-mail messages using Eudora and many other e-mail
client programs, these programs tack on information describing what
kind of data your messages contain.
For instance, when you send a plain text message, Eudora might
include a header field that looks something like this:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
This "content type" information helps your recipients' e-mail
programs know how to handle your messages: how best to display them
(as text, HTML, and/or some other formats); what character sets are
used in your messages; whether to save all or part of your messages
as one or more files ("attachments") on your recipients' disks; and
so on.
When you send a message that contains the same content in two or
more different formats -- most commonly as both plain text and HTML
-- Eudora will add a "Content-Type" header that identifies your
message as containing "multipart/alternative" content. Eudora will
also insert extra 'boundary' lines and additional Content-Type
headers to mark the places in your message where the first (text) and
second (HTML) parts begin and end.
As Greg Merritt has suggested, configuring Eudora's settings to
send only plain text messages might do the trick to allow the list
server for WebDNA-Talk mailing list to accept your messages.
Finally, another thing to watch out for is anything unusual that
you might include in your plain text messages, such as pasted-in
graphics or attachments. Adding these non-text elements can cause
your outgoing messages to be identified with the content type
"multipart/mixed", which might also be unacceptable to that list
server.
Aron Roberts
Workstation Software Support Group
P.S. The following are some representative examples of Web pages
which discuss MIME (the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
specification, which is now also used in many Internet contexts
outside of e-mail), character sets, the "Content-Type" header, and
the "multipart/alternative" MIME type:
http://www.ufaq.org/navcom/mime_tutorial.html (MIME)
http://hunnysoft.com/mime/ (MIME)
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/chars.html (character sets)
http://www.freesoft.org/CIE/RFC/1521/18.htm (multipart/alternative)
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