Re: mailcap and Microsoft OOXML

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

steve%prd.co.uk@localhost (Steve Blinkhorn) writes:

> Can a mailcap entry make an attachment with these headers:
>
> Content-Type: application/octet-stream
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
> Content-Description: Microsoft OOXML
> Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="acctkey.xlsx"
>
> be read with scalc?   More generally, is there a way of parsing the
> Content-Description header along with the Content-Type to cope with
> application/octet-stream attachyments?  I get a lot of spreadsheet
> attachments, some of which start up scalc and some don't and have to
> be manually saved and opened outside the mail reader.

My impression is that

  it's common but technically  buggy of the sender to use octet-stream
  instead of the actual content type

  it is highly normal for MUAs to look at the filename and intuit a
  replacement content-type and use that

  I am unaware of the use of the content-description field for automated
  processing by MUAs.

  Just looking at ~/.mailcap, it's about content-types, so presumably
  the extension->content-type mapping is not part of mailcap

You didn't mention which ancient mailreader you are using, but the
solution for you probably lies in MUA-specific configuration, or perhaps
a few lines of code.

Either that or you can get everyone you know to send you .ods instead
with the right mime-type :-)