[sylpheed:36725] Sylpheed not showing all attachments in the list below the headers

[Michael Shell]

Greetings,

I'm using Sylpheed 3.7.0 on my Linux box. I've encountered an issue that
seems to have existed for some time (since at least version 3.4.1).

If I send an email with attachments to myself (or as a CC), I can see a
list of all the attachments at the top of the email (just below the
headers). However, sometimes when someone else sends me email, I only see
one attachment listed below the headers (in the example I have, it is the
*second* attachment), but if I scroll down through the entire
email/attachments I find that there actually are several of them
(e.g., 3).

Needless to say, this behavior can cause me to miss an attachment.

I want to always see all attachments listed just below the headers.

If I forward the problematic message to another account using Sylpheed
and then view it, I still see only one message listed under the headers.
However, when I forwarded it, Sylpheed did indicate that there were in
fact three attachments.

There isn't any email client mentioned in the headers of the problematic
example email I have, so I don't know the name of the email client that
produced the message that demonstrates the problem.

Looking at the email sources, my Sylpheed-created attachments (which are
listed just fine) look something like this:


--Multipart=_Fri__13_Jul_2018_09_11_01_-0400_V4Yg_VxV1mWYECu_
Content-Type: application/x-tex;
name="color_issue.tex"
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename="color_issue.tex"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

CiUgQSB0ZXN0IG9mIHRoZSBjb2xvciBwYWN...


while for the problematic email, they are like this:


--_006_121fa806031c427a8a64b3ddb9e61454foise_
Content-Type: text/x-tex; name="color_issue.tex"
Content-Description: color_issue.tex
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="color_issue.tex"; size=54664;
creation-date="Tue, 03 Jul 2018 13:28:56 GMT";
modification-date="Tue, 03 Jul 2018 13:28:56 GMT"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

CiUgQSB0ZXN0IG9mIHRoZSBjb2xvciBwYW...


Has anyone else encountered this problem before?


Cheers and thanks in advance,

Mike Shell

[Anton Shepelev]

If I send an email with attachments to myself (or
as a CC), I can see a list of all the attachments
at the top of the email (just below the headers).
However, sometimes when someone else sends me
email, I only see one attachment listed below the
headers (in the example I have, it is the *second*
attachment), but if I scroll down through the en-
tire email/attachments I find that there actually
are several of them (e.g., 3).

What do you have in

Configuration -> Common preferences -> Display ->
Attachment

and have you tried experimenting with those parame-
ters? Are you sure the display of attachments is
not determined by their extensions?

[Anton Shepelev]

If I send an email with attachments to myself (or
as a CC), I can see a list of all the attachments
at the top of the email (just below the headers).
However, sometimes when someone else sends me
email, I only see one attachment listed below the
headers (in the example I have, it is the *second*
attachment), but if I scroll down through the en-
tire email/attachments I find that there actually
are several of them (e.g., 3).
Needless to say, this behavior can cause me to
miss an attachment.

Conirmed. Sylpheed won't show attachments at the
top of the message view that it knows to be plain
text files. It prints them instead at the bottom.

I agree that this behavior is confusing, for I my-
self have missed important information because of
it. I think it would be an improvement if Sylpheed
listed all attachemts at the top of the message
view. Should the user want to peruse the contents
of a plain-text attachment the old way, he still
find it at the bottom.

I believe you can set a test e-email to this list
demostrating the behavior. The option:

Configuration -> Common preferences -> Display -> Attachment ->
Show attached files first on message view

should be enabled. As everybody can see, it does
not apply to all types of attachment.

[Michael Shell]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2018 22:32:51 +0300

Post by Anton Shepelev
Conirmed. Sylpheed won't show attachments at the
top of the message view that it knows to be plain
text files. It prints them instead at the bottom.

Thanks Anton. Yep, I've missed important attachments because of this
behavior as well. A large number of "text" attachments are often not
suitable for inline viewing because of their length - .tex, .log,
.conf, etc.

In my next post, I will try to forward the test example you gave me
to the list.


Cheers and thanks,

Mike

[Michael Shell]

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2018 11:49:48 +0300
From: Anton Shepelev <***@gmail.com>
To: Michael Shell <***@michaelshell.org>
Subject: Re: [sylpheed:36736] Sylpheed not showing all attachments in the list below the headers


This is a test e-mail that shall show an inconsitency in
Sylpheed's handling of attachments with the "Show attached
file in the message view" option. Attached a two files:
test.txt and text.unknown. The latter is displayed in the
message view and the former is not. Instead, its contents
are listed at the bottom of the message body.

[Javier]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2018 16:54:02 -0400

Post by Michael Shell
This is a test e-mail that shall show an inconsitency in
Sylpheed's handling of attachments with the "Show attached
test.txt and text.unknown. The latter is displayed in the
message view and the former is not. Instead, its contents
are listed at the bottom of the message body.

(sorry to reply here instead the original thread issue)

Hi,

you are right, depending on the attachment type it is shown, in the
view panel, or window, or space (as you wish), inline but... at the
same time, and I don't understand why now it is an issue, Sylpheed
always have a way to show that the mail has attachments, even if it
has only a plain text file, because, after all, when a mail has an
attachment, it becomes multipart, and when the mail is multipart, the
attachments display is enabled.

And for this, you have a couple of settings.

You can show an additional tab to the view window so you can switch
to the attachment window; or you can show an icon, on the right or
the left, in the same space where the From:, To: and Subject: headers
are placed in the viewing panel.

Also, there is a default option that tells Sylpheed to show
attachments at the top (even though, in your case, might be not very
useful).

If there is something confusing, is when you receive a multipart
message with plain+html (sadly most of the mails nowadays) that can
"trick" you and make you think that there is nothing and the
attachment is just the html part, but I myself, awalys check
attachments, just in case when I receive an plain+html mail.

In this case, html mailers are the one to blame, but we can't do
anything with it.

Just check just in case. I think Sylpheed does a good job with
attachment, but is my personal view, of course.

Regards.

[Michael Shell]

On Thu, 16 Aug 2018 03:21:17 +0200

Post by Javier
You can show an additional tab to the view window so you can switch
to the attachment window; or you can show an icon, on the right or
the left, in the same space where the From:, To: and Subject: headers
are placed in the viewing panel.

Javier,

Yeah, see that's extra effort - if I don't manually go to the attachments
button or tab for every email, an attachment could be missed.

Looking into it a bit more, the issue is not so much whether an attachment
is text or not, but rather whether it is displayed *inline* as is usually
the case with text attachments and can be (depending on preference
settings) for images as well.

If an attachment is displayed inline, then Sylpheed won't display it at
the top as that apparently is considered redundant. This may be fine for
short text attachments. However, for long ones the inline attachment
widgets can be buried within thousands of lines of text.

Post by Javier
If there is something confusing, is when you receive a multipart
message with plain+html (sadly most of the mails nowadays) that can
"trick" you and make you think that there is nothing and the
attachment is just the html part, but I myself, awalys check
attachments, just in case when I receive an plain+html mail.

So, you are saying that a plain text part is present, but does not have
the actual message, even though it may be completely empty (or may only
have some extraneous/other info in it) and the HTML part contains the
important part of the message.

Furthermore, under
Configuration->Common Preferences->Display->Message
"Prefer HTML in multipart/alternative for display"
is *not* selected in your case - that the plain text portion is to be
preferred.

Do I understand the scenario correctly?

I must confess that even after using email for decades, that I have not
paid much attention to the above because 99.9% of the time, at least in
my own experience, "blank plain text" emails like that are SPAM anyway.

But I sure can see how email users (on both the sending and receiving
ends) could get tripped up by email clients that behave like that.


Cheers,

Mike

[Javier]

On Fri, 17 Aug 2018 01:56:30 -0400

Post by Michael Shell

Post by Javier
If there is something confusing, is when you receive a multipart
message with plain+html (sadly most of the mails nowadays) that can
"trick" you and make you think that there is nothing and the
attachment is just the html part, but I myself, awalys check
attachments, just in case when I receive an plain+html mail.

So, you are saying that a plain text part is present, but does not have
the actual message, even though it may be completely empty (or may only
have some extraneous/other info in it) and the HTML part contains the
important part of the message.
Furthermore, under
Configuration->Common Preferences->Display->Message
"Prefer HTML in multipart/alternative for display"
is *not* selected in your case - that the plain text portion is to be
preferred.
Do I understand the scenario correctly?

Hi,

what I was trying to say in my paragraph is that when a multipart
mail is received, Sylpheed displays "hints" to the user telling that
there are attchments, even though the mail may consist in just a
plain text part (empty or not) or the html version counterpart (empty
or not, after all a multipart doesn't necessarily need to have
content).

So, if someone gets used to say, "nah, the attachment, is just the
(html|plain) version" (depending on your told settings), it can be
confusing, the user tricks himself actually, "misleading" from the
information given by Sylpheed (look, there is an attachment!) and the
decisions by the user.

If fact, if we think in an extreme scenario, someone not tech savvy
coming from old Outlook like mail client, that didn't tell the user
that there was a counterpart to the displayed version of the mail (in
a multipart mail), when comes to Sylpheed like mail clients could
say, "oh god, again, stop telling me there are attachments when "they
aren't"", and stop checking attachments.

And, in the end, is up to the user to check attachments. In some way,
and believe me, I'm not trying to blame you at all, you are acting
like this. Sylhpeed is telling you that there are attachments but, as
inline, are at the bottom and also you don't check the mail
attachments, so you are missing things. Just in case, check ;)
Really, I'm not trying to blame you or users acting like you, because
I have done too!, is that, if a mail client is telling there is
something happening, maybe is a good idea to check it. Maybe ;)

I may agree with you that it won't be bad idea to display the
attachment indicator at the top, as even when set to prefer HTML
viewing, it is "attached" inline to the viewer window, but, is just
my opinion, is a good idea to always check attachments if a
(whichever) mail client tell us there are, just in case.

About the spam mail thing (I didn't quote here) I'm so dumb that I
even check them on known spam mails, but also the source. But is just
me, I like security and I check eeeeeverything.


Sorry for this "damn" long mail and I hope you don't feel attacked as
it wasn't my intention. I'm not against adding such feature and I was
telling my point of view on this matter and why I don't feel
necessary. Even though, I understand you.

Regards.

P.S.: and really sorry for any mistakes as english is not my mother
tongue.