problems with rmime's handling of some received MIME attachments

[Florian v. Savigny]

Hello,

I've been having a recurrent but as yet unpredictable problem with the
way rmime offers me to process a file attachment, but only in some
cases, which I will try to distinguish from one another.

Normally, rmime works like this on my system: a message with an
attachment will contain a line such as:

   Press C-c C-c here for "application/zip; name="Longer File Name.ZIP"" data

When I press C-c C-c on that line, the file will be stored in
/tmp. (Actually, it should also run the program defined in ~/.mailcap,
which it doesn't do, but I don't care enough to fix that.) I am happy
with that, and the file works fine. I refer to this behaviour as the
"first type".



Now there is a different case, in which the message will contain a
slightly different line, such as:

   Press C-c C-c here to receive file transmission
^_ -=- MIME -=- ^_^L

When I press C-c C-c on that line, emacs will prompt in the
minibuffer: "Save transmitted file as: " and I can type in a filename,
press Enter and the file is saved. The next thing that happens is that
a new window displaying the contents of the - binary - file springs
up; uselessly, of course. The file is corrupted, i.e. it seems to have
a plausible length, but is not reckognized as, e.g., Word
format. I refer to this behaviour as the "second type".


I'd be glad should anyone have a clue what goes on here. I have tried
to sort out what causes rmime to display the different lines and have
pasted relevant lines from the raw rmail file below my signature. As
far a I am concerned, I don't see any difference: the sender used the
same mailer, same OS, and same computer. The MIME stuff looks the same
to me. But what drives rmime behaviour?

Any help greatly appreciated!

[Oh, the following info is missing:

;; Author: Ray Moody <moody@cray.com>
;; Version: $Id: rmime.el,v 1.2 1996/05/30 02:24:58 moody Exp $
;; Keywords: MIME, mail


GNU Emacs 20.6.1 (i386-suse-linux, X toolkit) of Sam Mär 11 2000 on Hahn

~/.emacs:

(add-hook 'rmail-show-message-hook 'rmime-format)
(add-hook 'rmail-edit-mode-hook    'rmime-cancel)
(autoload 'rmime-format "rmime" "" nil)
(setq rmime-metamail-program "/usr/bin/metamail")

]

-- 
                                               Florian von Savigny
__________________________________________________________________
nospam@please.to.me




* the first (working) type:

[Header]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part1_118.13fb4608.2a56b36b_boundary"
X-Mailer: AOL 6.0 for Windows DE sub 10512
.
.
.
--part1_118.13fb4608.2a56b36b_boundary
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
        boundary="part1_118.13fb4608.2a56b36b_alt_boundary"
.
.
.

--part1_118.13fb4608.2a56b36b_alt_boundary--

--part1_118.13fb4608.2a56b36b_boundary
Content-Type: application/zip; name="Longer File Name.ZIP"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Longer File Name.ZIP"

UEsDBBQAAgAIAKpWWSyzAt/icE0cAOg91QAeAAAAQmF5ZXIgQ2xpbmljYWwgUHJpbWVyIEVO
T1gucGRmlLgDlKVL0i5cttFlV3XZtm27y7atLtu2zS7btrps28atPnNm1nwz373/+ve7cmdk
RGTgjcy94tkkckIi1PQ0jLAkO7tTc7BQrGxs+HT4NvrmsFxc+LC0UmbWRnr2Zu5Ghvj0X0tZ
.
.
.
--part1_118.13fb4608.2a56b36b_boundary--
^_^L






* the second (not working) type:

[Header]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part1_ae.2a2b668d.2a68890d_boundary"
X-Mailer: AOL 6.0 for Windows DE sub 10512
.
.
.
--part1_ae.2a2b668d.2a68890d_boundary
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
        boundary="part1_ae.2a2b668d.2a68890d_alt_boundary"
.
.
.
--part1_ae.2a2b668d.2a68890d_alt_boundary--

--part1_ae.2a2b668d.2a68890d_boundary
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="also long filename.doc"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="also long filename.doc"

0M8R4KGxGuEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPgADAP7/CQAGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAFAAAAewIAAAAA
AAAAEAAAfQIAAAEAAAD+////AAAAAHYCAAB3AgAAeAIAAHkCAAB6AgAA////////////////
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
.
.
.
--part1_ae.2a2b668d.2a68890d_boundary--

^_^L