If I send patches on Windows (using Thunderbird as a mailer), but the message
body has all sorts of weird MIME goop, and the bundle is given a temporary name
like darcs1283 instead of a nice meaningful one, like under Unix

Does MIME-encoding messages actually work with MAPI?  Or is it just that
Thunderbird does not parse MIME-encoded messages darcs send through it, or that
our particular encoding is subtly wrong?

If the feature is added for darcs to connect and send directly to a SMTP host,
(as another report is already open), and it was well documented would that be a
sufficient resolution to this?

I still think we should try to fix this if possible.  

There are three files which I think somebody with Windows-hacking experience
could look at:
* src/win32/send_email.c - can we set the filetype?
* src/Darcs/External.hs - are we calling this right?
* src/Darcs/Email.hs - should we avoid the make_email function on Windows?

The alternative proposed to fixing this bug was to implement issue906,  which
we've marked as wont-fix.  I suppose it would also be useful if somebody to try
msmtp with Windows and report back.

I've not looked into darcs source for a while, but here goes.

When I looked into this or very similar problem, few years back maybe, 
the problem had many sides: darcs should let MAPI do the email 
composition, and not to do it by itself;  When receiving MAPI-composed 
emails, darcs needs more robust mime-parsing;  Line-endings related 
problems.

I also recommend that you use my MAPI bindings in Win32.

My 2c,
Esa

On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 22:22:02 +0000, Esa Ilari Vuokko wrote:
> When I looked into this or very similar problem, few years back maybe, 
> the problem had many sides: darcs should let MAPI do the email 
> composition, and not to do it by itself;

OK. 

> When receiving MAPI-composed emails, darcs needs more robust
> mime-parsing

Sounds like issue26

> Line-endings related problems.

Does this need to be a separate ticket or would it go away if we
did MAPI right?

> I also recommend that you use my MAPI bindings in Win32.

Agreed! I didn't find a link to the package on hackage, so it'd be good
if you could paste it in.

Of course, a patch from you for old times' sake would be very welcome.
This sort of thing may be a bit easier with (a) our use of Cabal and (b)
our commitment to outsourcing non-darcs-specific functionality to third
party libraries (see http://wiki.darcs.net/DarcsLibraries )

Eric Kow wrote:
>> When receiving MAPI-composed emails, darcs needs more robust
>> mime-parsing
> 
> Sounds like issue26

Issue 26 certainly is major part of the problem.

>> Line-endings related problems.
> 
> Does this need to be a separate ticket or would it go away if we
> did MAPI right?

If I recall right, I didn't dig deep enough to understand if the issue 
was with MAPI or with darcs' parsing MIME.

>> I also recommend that you use my MAPI bindings in Win32.
> 
> Agreed! I didn't find a link to the package on hackage, so it'd be good
> if you could paste it in.

I meant Win32-library.  System.Win32.SimpleMAPI  (Actual name of the 
interface from Microsoft is Simple MAPI, but commonly referenced as MAPI.)

http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/Win32/System-Win32-SimpleMAPI.html

There is no inherent gain over C-version of course, except it's perhaps 
easier to understand and use, at least in presence of attachments and or 
modifying flags.  (Darcs ought to support option to use external editor 
to edit email, or use MAPI-enabled user-agent GUI for that, at least.)

Best regards,
Esa