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Re: Netscape Communicator: MIME issues on the Macintosh and plenty of other problems
OK I couldn't get any answer which would help me to fix our problems yet
so my question would be more on the following lines:
When you install Netscape Communicator on a Macintosh, how is it going
to decide which are the types and where are the applications it should
start when receiving MIME attachments. Does it use the Desktop
application database on the Macintosh? What happens if this database is
corrupted or not up dated?
Moreover what changed concerning MIME types et al between 4.02 and 4.03
(or shall I say 4.03.1 as it seems there was a maybe clearly hidden
release?) Indeed now if you send a mail with a word document with a .doc
extension it gets encoded Base 64 and although the icon and meta info
comes right you cannot open the document.
So I believe that the logics/defaults etc. must be really horrible on
Netscape Mac. My surprise comes from the fact that other clients get it
right so is Netscape too laxist, too clever, too strict, ?? Why don't we
have so many attachment problems on Windows 95 for example?
Moreover as I got the support from many different people, I collected
all the problems we have with Netscape Mail to:
http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/service/mail/problems/netscape.
There is little on Java and other related problems but still others can
see the magnitude of the issues. I am happy to welcome more input in
something which could be a real FAQ ... If any body from Netscape is
reading, PLEASE give me an update on those design issues in a way I can
reply because the online help is really too frustrating (I am not a
pupil anymore and I believe we have Good suggestions for you to get a
better product).
Answers via e-mail are apreciated
John Friend wrote:
>
> If you can send me (via e-mail) a sample of the message for this case:
>
> Simeon Mac > Netscape4 Mac does NOT work.......but Simeon Mac >
> Netscape3 Mac works!!!
>
> then, I'll let you know what's going on and perhaps we can get it corrected in
> our next maintenance release.
>
> --John
>
> Arnaud Taddei wrote:
>
> > At CERN we are trying to deploy Netscape Communicator and (as probably
> > many others) we are experiencing several problems and I may publish a
> > longer list later.
> >
> > The one that is BLOCKING any further deployment at the moment concerns the
> > exchange of MIME attached documents via E-Mail between Netscape on the
> > Macintosh and other mail agents. In our organization MIME support and
> > handling of enclosures (mainly Word and Excel) is something we take very
> > seriously.
> >
> > In particular we have a serious problem to exchange documents between
> > Simeon (ESYS) and Netscape Communicator 4.03 on the Macintosh. Indeed
> > WinWord documents sent from Simeon are not categorised correctly when
> > received on the Macintosh and read with Netscape Communicator 4.03.
> >
> > We tested many combinations of tests with all other client we have on our
> > Mac and PC mail clients and for Netscape and Simeon here are the results
> > are listed in Note 1 below.
> >
> > Are these Netscape MIME issues a known problem? Can anybody reproduce this
> > problem? Is anybody aware of a workaround? Was it tested by the Internet
> > Mail Consortium interoperability tests (Dave? Paul?) if not could this
> > kind of issues added in future interop tests?
> >
> > Thanks for answering via e-mail as well.
> >
> > PS: We have as well other MIME issues with Netscape Communicator on the
> > Macintosh, see note 2.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > Arnaud Taddei tel: +41 22 767 9349
> > IT Division 31 1-016 fax: +41 22 767 7155
> > CERN mail: Arnaud.Taddei@cern.ch
> > CH-1211 Geneve 23 URL: http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/~taddei
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Note 1:
> > -------
> > Results of interop MIME tests between Simeon and Netscape on the Mac and
> > on the PC.
> > Netscape Mac > Simeon Mac ok
> > Netscape PC > Simeon Mac ok
> > Simeon Mac > Netscape4 PC ok
> > Simeon Mac > Netscape4 Mac does NOT work.......but Simeon Mac >
> > Netscape3 Mac works!!!
> >
> > The last results are very strange and it looks like if you Netscape
> > adopted a stricter implementation of MIME in version 4 than in version 3
> > (on the Macintosh)? We have investigated differences in the source of
> > the messages and we can see that Simeon is generating a lot of the
> > headers in uppercase (and mixed case) while the other systems are
> > exclusively using lowercase (like BASE64 instead of base64,
> > MULTIPART/MIXED instead of multipart/mixed, etc). This might be the
> > reason why it does not work in Netscape 4? We don't pretend to be MIME
> > experts so we don't know if Simeon or Netscape is to blame. We have asked
> > the Esys and Netscape people but we are left without answer for the
> > moment.
> >
> > Note 2:
> > -------
> > Moreover, we experienced issues when a user sends a WinWord attached
> > document with Nestcape on the Macintosh. Recipients have often problems in
> > particular due to the Macintosh meta data file which is passed as an extra
> > MIME attached file to the recipients who get confused when getting a .UKN
> > additional file. This problem is documented for our users at CERN at:
> > http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/service/mail/mime
--
-----------------------------------------------------------
Arnaud Taddei tel: +41 22 767 9349
IT Division 31 1-016 fax: +41 22 767 7155
CERN mail: Arnaud.Taddei@cern.ch
CH-1211 Geneve 23 URL: http://wwwcn.cern.ch/~taddei
-----------------------------------------------------------