MIMEALTPREFS

Syntax

Envariable: N/A
Element: <MIMEALTPREFS>
content-type
content-type
...
</MIMEALTPREFS>
Command-line Option: N/A

Description

MIMEALTPREFS allows you to specify media-type preferences for multipart/alternative data, overriding the default preferences as specified in mail messages.

When a multipart/alternative entity is processed, the last filterable media-type is normally used. However, it is sometimes desirable to override this behavior for certain media-types. For example, it has become common for many MUAs to generate the following message structures:

  multipart/alternative
    text/plain
    text/html

A message with HTML and a plain text equivalent for receiving MUAs who cannot render HTML. When MHonArc processes such a message, MHonArc will use the text/html part since it is filterable and comes after text/plain.

There are many who would like to have nothing to do with HTML in email (for security reasons). With MIMEALTPREFS, you can tell MHonArc to use the text/plain entity (if it exists) over the text/html part with the following setting:

<MIMEAltPrefs>
text/plain
text/html
</MIMEAltPrefs>

Media-types listed in MIMEALTPREFS are from most prefered to least prefered.

MIMEALTPREFS augments the normal processing of multipart/alternative entities. For example, say the following message entity structure exists,

  multipart/alternative
    text/plain
    text/enriched
    text/html

and we are using the MIMEALTPREFS setting,

<MIMEAltPrefs>
text/plain
text/html
</MIMEAltPrefs>

Which entity will MHonArc actually use? In this case, the text/enriched part will be used. The reason is the text/html will be excluded since a text/plain alternative entity exists. However, MHonArc still tries to use the last filterable alternative part, which is text/enriched in this case.

In order to have text/plain chosen, the following MIMEALTPREFS setting would be needed,

<MIMEAltPrefs>
text/plain
text/enriched
text/html
</MIMEAltPrefs>

This says that text/enriched is preferred over text/html. And text/plain is preferred over text/enriched and text/html.

NOTE:

Each time <MIMEALTPREFS> occurs in a resource file, the last encountered setting will override any previous values. Therefore, specifying the override attribute is redundant.

MIMEALTPREFS

Syntax

Description

Default Setting

Resource Variables

Examples

Version

See Also