Bug: mailnotify.tmpl uses an incorrect multipart/ mime type

Currently, mailnotify.tmpl uses a content type of multipart/mixed. This causes all subparts of the messages to render incorrectly in Mozilla and Thunderbird mailers.

Test case

The attached bad.jpg shows the problem (I've had to white out company-sensitive information, so don't freak out).

Environment

-- TravisCampbell - 11 Jan 2005

Follow up

Section 5.1.2, 5.1.3, and 5.1.4 of RFC2046 defines the use of multipart/mixed and multipart/alternative. Basically, they state that multipart/mixed takes all the message parts and merges them together into a single rendered output. multipart/alternative, while syntactically identical to multipart/mixed, is semantically different. multipart/alternative message parts are alternative versions of the same message.

The way the message is being crafted for mailnotify, the proper content type is multipart/alternative.

-- TravisCampbell - 11 Jan 2005

Travis, actually I put the multipart/mixed in by design so that the mail client would display a text message followed by an HTML message. The problem is that different mail clients display multipart/mixed messages differently. Some inline the HTML message (as intended), some show just a link, and some are buggy as shown here.

Reason for multipart/mixed: The nice HTML message originally did not have the "subscribe" link, but the text message does. A while ago a "subscribe" link has been added to the bottom (to the topic action links section), so now it makes sense to change the message to multipart/alternative.

Could someone test if the subscribe link shows correctly when using the ClassicSkin and PatternSkin?

-- PeterThoeny - 12 Jan 2005

Fix record

--- mailnotify.tmpl     Sat May 29 01:51:36 2004
+++ /tmp/mailnotify.tmpl.new    Tue Jan 11 10:00:02 2005
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 To: %EMAILTO%
 Subject: %WIKITOOLNAME%.%WEB% - Automated notification of topic changes
 MIME-Version: 1.0
-Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------2D594AE113AD25493C2C7246"
+Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------2D594AE113AD25493C2C7246"
 
 This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
 --------------2D594AE113AD25493C2C7246

Fixed in DEVELOP branch, rev 3472

But I'm ready to revert at any point if anyone tells me to....

-- CrawfordCurrie - 11 Jan 2005

No, not revert, but test if it works in popular skins!

-- PeterThoeny - 18 Jan 2005

I'm guessing you meant "popular mail clients" above, yes?

Without knowing what mail clients had problems, that's hard. I googled and found some remarks from 1995 about it not working in "some clients" but no other reference.

The draft MHTML standard actually suggests multipart/related. outlook Express for one doesn't support this properly, however.

People, please highlight if you use a mail client that doesn't handle multipart/alternative!

-- CrawfordCurrie - 18 Jan 2005

Using Lotus Notes 6.5 as an email client, mailnotify emails look like this : ugly.png : regardless of whether we're using multipart/alternative or multipart/mixed

See also: discussion in MailNotifyInPlainTextFormat

-- KeithHelfrich - 03 May 2005