[Chandler-dev] attachments vs. multipart-alternative

[Brian Kirsch]

Hi Jeffrey,
While I have not taken much time to ponder your request yet I do see  
some issues.

First alternative types are intended to provide the same information  
in the different
renderable formats such as HTML, Rich Text, and Plain Text. While it  
could be
argued that .ics and .eimml are just different views of the same  
data, .ics and .eimml
are not *renderable* in Email Clients. I am also  concerned about  
making this wide a
change at this point in the Preview schedule (I am leaving on June  
21st for EuroPython).


Second using the alternative type means the average user will not see
the (ics or eimml) in his or her mail client. This to me is also an  
issue.
If a non-Chandler user wants to add the Event or Task to Outlook or
ICal, the .ics file will not be accessible. In fact the user
will not even know that an .ics attachment was sent with the message.

Since .eimml takes priority over .ics  in Chandler, what would
be the point of sending .ics attachments if users could not
access them to add to other calendaring clients?

At this point, I would suggest waiting for more user evaluation. We  
have been
mailing .ics attachments with Events for quite a while and this is the
first time I have heard of negative feedback about attachments.


Thoughts?

-Brian




On Jun 14, 2007, at 10:34 AM, Jeffrey Harris wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> Would it be feasible to send our Chandler data payload in emails as
> multipart/alternative?  I've gotten feedback from a few people that  
> they
> don't like having attachments added to every email they send ("it's
> annoying for recipients" is the argument, I think).
>
> I know mailing lists sometimes are configured to filter out all but  
> the
> lowest-common-denominator alternative from messages, so that might  
> be a
> problem.  But some mailing lists will filter out attachments, too, so
> I'm not sure it's a show-stopper.
>
> Sincerely,
> Jeffrey
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
>
> Open Source Applications Foundation "chandler-dev" mailing list
> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/chandler-dev