Can we set the MIME "Content Disposition" paramete

[arielrobaldo]

Hello,

I've been using Thunderbird for about 6 months.
Some people to whom I send plain text files as attachments see them inside the message body.
This does not happen if I use MSOutlook.
After some work I've seen that the mean diference is the MIME "content disposition" parameter.

MSOutlook sets it as "attachment" and Thunderbird sets it as "inline".

I thought this was the cause but I found no way to change this inThunderbird.

Has anybody any clue?

Thanks a lot in advance.

PS: Congratulations to the Thunderbird team, your product is great!!

[tanstaafl]

Set the following in prefs.js to use Content-Disposition: attachment;.
user_pref("mail.content_disposition_type", 1);

or to use Content-Disposition: inline;
user_pref("mail.content_disposition_type", 0);

This does modify the MIME body part header in the message. Whether the email client will use that setting (like yahoo webmail does) or rely upon its equivalent of view->display attachments inline is a different question.

[arielrobaldo]

Thanks a lot.

I found the point on TB of viewing attachments on line, but the receiver is using LotusNotes and when I asked him he had no idea of this setting, he only saw that one message (from TB) displays it online and the other message (from MSO) did not.

This lead me to think that some MUA (here LotusNotes) assume a behavior from the said MIME parameter.

You've been very helpful, I'll change my prefs, check and revert.

Regards

[arielrobaldo]

Thanks Tanstaafl,

this solved the problem.

Regards

[andrea.m]

can this be fixed by default? IT's the one thing that prevents me from recommending tb to others, and the one thing that annoys the hell out of me (people complain and I have to jump through hoops to zip files before I send them)

[tanstaafl]

If they're using thunderbird why don't you just send them an attachment of a user.js file with

user_pref("mail.inline_attachments", false);
user_pref("mail.content_disposition_type", 1);

that will prevent them from sending an attachment inline, and also prevent them from displaying one inline.

>people complain and I have to jump through hoops to zip files before I send them

That preference is meant for the person sending the email, not the one receiving it. The person receiving the mail almost always (based on the email clients I've tried) has the opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot by setting a preference that overides whether you sent the attachment as inline or as a external file. IMHO the reason for sending a zip file is because you can't trust the other user to do the right thing (and they're going to blame you), not because of a flaw in thunderbird.

[andrea.m]

You misunderstood. I am using tb. My recepients are using eudora, outlook, etc., and when I send them text files as an attachment they get them inline. When I send the same files using eudora, outlook, etc... , they receive them as attachment. Obviously the problem is on my side. Obviously they complain about my program, since they have this problem only from me.

[michib]

Yes, I agree to that. Why should it be a problem to provide a checkbox or list box for choosing a attachment being send inline or not. Just as it is done with the "forward a message as" option.

[tanstaafl]

If you want to lobby for it I suggest you start a thread in the thunderbird features forum where it is more likely to get the developers attention, if only because its easier for them to track requests there.

The GUI would get really bloated and intimidating if every possible user preference could be set in it. Thats why there is prefs.js and users.js. I suggest you focus on arguing why this preference is important enough/set often enough to add it to the GUI rather than why it would be so easy to add.

[Guest]

I don't think it's a matter of changing the GUI. An attachment, by default, should be "attached". If anyone wanted to send it inine she/he would have just copied and pasted the document. I don't see why the default is set to inline.

[tanstaafl]

>If anyone wanted to send it inine she/he would have just copied and pasted the document.

Not every document can be copied and pasted into a message. How would you do that for a .JPG or a .ZIP file in a plain text message? You'd have to encode/transform it in some way so that it could be pasted as normal text. Thats basicly what a base64 encoded inline attachment does.

I've noticed for the last couple of years any attachments I get from people in a corporate environment are sent inline. If I use a email providers webmail they seem to send attachments inline. So I suspect the de-facto standard has changed.

[naknek]

I've noticed for the last couple of years any attachments I get from people in a corporate environment are sent inline. If I use a email providers webmail they seem to send attachments inline. So I suspect the de-facto standard has changed.

I agree that image files are commonly sent inline, but are you seriously saying you think the de-facto standard is to send ATTACHED TEXT FILES inline as well? The only place I've ever encountered this behavior is in Thunderbird, and I really find it difficult to imagine why anyone would want their attached text files to be displayed inline at all, let alone by default.

Think about it ... if you want to add some text from a file to be displayed inline in your message, it is a very easy and commonly understood task to copy the text and paste it into your message where you want it to appear. On the other hand, if you want to send, say, a 600K database text extract to a colleague, you certainly don't want THAT showing up inline. So instead of copying and pasting it into your message, you would attach it ... and then get a nasty surprise when you find out that Thunderbird sent it inline anyway.

[tanstaafl]

Everybody who has sent me a large text attachment has been smart enough to ZIP it. So I don't care which setting people use.

[andrea.m]

I picked up a suggestion on this thread and started a topic in the features forum
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=78111
Hopefully some replies there will make developers notice.

[Patrice.B]

Hello,

I am using a cryptographic program wich produce .p7m file.
When I attach such a file, it was included as inline as shown below:
--------------010409000403080608000204
Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-mime;
name="Configuration.p7m"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: inline;
filename="Configuration.p7m"

MIMBDvgGCSqGSIb3DQEHA6CDAQ7oMIMBDuMCAQ....

and when I receive it in tb, it appears as SG000004.tmp attachment and the cryptographic application is not launched.

When I include "user_pref("mail.content_disposition_type", 1); " in my prefs.js, the file appears as attachmentas shown below:
--------------000206070707060004000303
Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-mime;
name="Configuration.p7m"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename="Configuration.p7m"

MIMBDvgGCSqGSIb3DQEHA6CDAQ7oMIMBDuMCAQAxggG4MI.....

but when I receive it in tb, it appears withe the same unusable name SG000004.tmp.

I hope that anybody has a solution to this problem

Thanks a lot in advance

Regards