IP: Microsoft breaks Mime specification

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

> Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 11:25:45 +0000 (GMT Standard Time)
> From: Frode Greisen <Frode.Greisen@ebone.net>
> To: David Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>
>
> Dave
>
> Using Pine as my mailer I found Microsoft XP outlook users could not read
> my attachments. We found this was due to a bug in Microsoft's Outlook XP
> mail user agent. Other non-MS mailers may have seen similar problems.
>
> As of this writing, Microsoft has acknowledged the bug but has not added
> it to the Knowledge Base. We have been told that there will be a
> post-SP1 hotfix for Outlook XP. This particular bug has bug fix number
> OfficeQFE:4781. The nature of the bug is that messages with attachments
> which contain a Content-ID header (which standard Pine attachments do)
> do not show the attachment indicator (a paperclip) when viewed with
> Outlook XP. So the user has no indication that the message contains an
> attachment.
>
> Pine has produced an option to remove the content-id header which is
> part of the Mime specification but which is probably not much used.
>
> The problem is that due to the Market share of Microsoft an error in a
> Microsoft program may force non-Microsoft users to make changes, and
> possibly also imply a loss of mail functionality.
>
> Frode

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