Eudora Email Attachments creating strange !Emacs !Emacs lines in text

Does the word "!Emacs" have any special meaning in Dutch?  However, my guess is that it might be trying to say "IE macros", where the letter "!" might be the Dutch font for "I".

I am not 100% sure of my ground, but here goes.
When you say "attaches" do you mean just that, i.e. s/he puts the names of the files in the "Attached:" line in the email creation window, or does s/he paste the images into the email?  It sounds like these are inline images, hence the CID references. CIDs are used to "point" to another part of a message, or indeed to another part of another message (though I doubt anyone uses that).
If you are interested in the detail see rfc 2392 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2392.txt for Content-id type of URL.
In that RFC it says:
"   Both message-id and content-id are required to be globally unique.
   That is, no two different messages will ever have the same Message-ID
   addr-spec; no different body parts will ever have the same Content-ID
   addr-spec.  A common technique used by many message systems is to use
   a time and date stamp along with the local host's domain name, e.g.,
   950124.162336@XIson.com."
So what you are seeing is an attempt to create a globally unique Content-id using the local host domain name, plus time and date and probably plus a message identifier (I am not too sure there) I think, by the sending mail client.
It looks like Outlook express uses the CID as the filename in which to create the .jpg when decoding the multi-part message - why if the sender has named the file????

When a message is composite (i.e. NOT attachments with inline images etc.) it is split up into multiple parts referenced by CID: between them so that the receiving mailer can reconstruct the original "shape" of the message.

What I am not able to explain is why Outlook is unable to reconstruct the message or why it should put in !Emacs - I presume your friend doesn't actually USE Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html) does s/he? If they are attachments then Outlook should not even attempt to put them inline in the text.

Normally, "attachments" have the name allocated by the sender as you report above, not CIDs.
If these really are Eudora "attachments" then I am baffled as to why CID referencing has been created by Eudora; it should not need to reference other parts of the MIME message from the body of the mail.

If you want to carry out some independent test of your Outlook express setup then you can stimulate MIME test messages. See http://www.imc.org/ietf-822/old-archive2/msg01411.html
Try sending a message with the subject line of "multipart/mixed" (without quotes) to get text, inline image and more text.

Apart from that, the only thing I can suggest is to try to capture the undecoded MIME message and post the relevant parts here. To do that you need a simple POP3 client (and an account of course) which just dumps the email source into a file.

Wow what a response. Sorry for the delay - Freeserve my ISP impounded the Experts-Exchange reply notification in the Spam Filter despite my having marked all email from EE to be Not Spam and so I missed this one.  I just came up to it by chance combing the last 250 spam messages.  OK here goes.

Kellycoinguy: Thanks for that, how do I post the source code of an email? I can get source code of a web page.  How do you mean by send email to a browser?  Browsers don't fetch email they fetch web pages.   Do you mean collect the email by logging in to webmail via the browser?  I don't understand sorry. Please elaborate.
Sysanprog:  Emacs I don't think is a dutch word I will ask my friend in holland and send all the replies here to him pasted in an email and see if he can make head or tail of it.
And talking of deciphering what you all mean:-  Sanktwo
I don't follow any of that I'm afraid it's completely over my head.
I will have to paste all your reply to my friend and see if he knows and at least I've given him the URLs you kindly supplied.  The only bits I can understand are that you wondered if he inline pastes the message or attaches it.  Well I thought I'd made that clear but obviously not.  He attaches and sometimes Imports into the message so that the photos appear sometimes with text above and below them like they're embedded in which case the message gets [] in the line instead of Emacs
I asked him this earlier on and he said this...
QUOTE
When I copy&paste a pic, that emacs appears (in your message, not in mine), like this:
Emacs!

But when I use the option 'insert object' to put a pic inside the
message, only two brackets {} will appear (in your message, not in mine), like this:
[]
UNQUOTE
So I am still not understanding a tenth of what is going on perhaps I shouldn't try as I suspect it's beyond my brain.  But I can help to unravel it with your help.  I can't close this help question yet as we're not at the bottom of it.  But I will return with more comment when he's had a look through all your good efforts to solve it.  So thanks again.  I'll be back soon.

I have found the source code of the email which I mentioned earlier.  I've not included all the mime encoded jpg just the first line and I've removed the header parts that compromise his and my security but this may be of help.  This was the one email where he sent both types of attachment and which I quoted in my last posting above.
PASTE.
Message-id: <xxxxxxxremovedxxxx@pop.planet.nl>
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.2.3.4
X-Antivirus: AVG for E-mail 7.0.344 [267.10.24]
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="Boundary_(ID_Up+8ENQ8721IG+1Ttd0DnA)"

--Boundary_(ID_Up+8ENQ8721IG+1Ttd0DnA)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hi,

I've BCC'd the three tests also to my own e-mail address and in all
three of them the emacs! appeared.

But... I've discovered something else which seems important.

When I copy&paste a pic, that emacs appears (in your message, not in
mine), look:
Emacs!


But when I use the option 'insert object' to put a pic inside the
message, only two brackets {} will appear (in your message, not in mine), look:
[]


So we're getting somewhere...

Cheers!

Rob

--Boundary_(ID_Up+8ENQ8721IG+1Ttd0DnA)
Content-id: <6.2.3.4.0.20050915102103.0249e7e8@pop.planet.nl.0>
Content-Type: image/jpeg; name=12bd9b8.jpg; x-mac-type=4A504547; x-mac-creator=4A565752
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-disposition: inline; filename=12bd9b8.jpg

/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wBDAAEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEB

LauriePrior, sorry to be obscure but on Experts-Exchange tricky to decide the level of explanation that questioners need.

If I understand the email correctly, when he bcc's the failing mail to himself HE also sees !Emacs or brakets when he views the returning mail in Eudora; is that true? It would certainly eliminate an Outlook bug at your end.

However, you certainly answered one question, NEITHER case of images with the !emacs or [] problems are attachments, they are both inline images i.e. the image was inserted in such a way as to be intended to appear inline in the email that is, in the text of the email. Both copying/pasting and "inserting picture" of the "edit" menu of Eudora will insert images inline, not as separate attachments.  As an experiment you might ask your friend just to try to save the image as a file somewhere, then paste the text of the  file name into the "Attached:" line in the header of Eudora. You should get the images in their original file names. I know that it is not solving your original "inline image" problem but it will show that you can receive the images ok.  The difference between attachments and inline is a bit subtle, inline are supposed to be handled ok by the mail client (in your case Outlook) where attachments are normally destined for another package such as powerpoint, paintshoppro etc.

Getting the "source code" of the original email would be interesting but I do not know of a simple way of doing it which does not involve downloading and installing a POP3 special client which does not decode the email into its component parts. There are such clients but they are generally for developers, not end users. There is also one that your friend could use which simulates an smtp server but simply captures the email as-is (dumbster). However, if neither of you are developers, it would be some struggle to set this up - maybe someone else knows a way for end-users to capture an unadulterated (i.e. not processed by Outlook) complete mail message with inline images intact in Base64 encoding?

On the other hand there is one possibility if the !Emacs and [] appear in Eudora at your friends end. Get him to bcc the email to himself, THEN transfer the received mail (not the sent mail) to a new mailbox with nothing else in it. Call the mailbox, say, "test". Then find the file "test.mbx" and post the contents. It is just a text file containing nothing but the text of the message in clear; he can obscure his email address etc with a normal text editor like Notepad. What you get is not exactly the source code because the images have been decoded and a reference put in their place, but it might allow us to see where the !Emacs originates - obviously only this route if Eudora also displays !Emacs as well as Outlook.  This is intriguing.

PS, what I should also have added is that the "source" of the email should have had a line in looking  something like:

<img src="cid:6.2.3.4.0.20050915102103.0249e7e8@pop.planet.nl.0" width=32 height=32 alt="[]"> (with appropriate sizes of course).

Where the !Emacs is and where the [] are. This is what invokes the insertion of the image at that point in the text. The question is - who lost it, Eudora, someone in between or Outlook? I suspect what you pasted is what Outlook thinks is the source, which might well have already been corrupted by Outlook.

Before I forget, do you EVER receive emails with inline images ok i.e. from other sources?

Thank you very much for that last one Sanktwo.
I'm going to forward the relevant instructions to Holland and see what my friend makes of it.
You're quite right it is an intriguing and infuriating problem. I can see now why other forums such as Eudora that I've been trying to solve this on, are totally foxed by it.

I'll get back to you when he's tried your latest suggestion.
All very exciting.  Got to solve it before October 1st as he's going on vacation to Greece for 12 days.

Might get something done this week end.
Regards
Plado

Sorry forgot to answer your question at the end.
I think I do get inline photos in my Outlook Express.  My friend has had several people tell him about the Emacs showing up so I'm not the only one who gets them from him.
He's even put in a signature note at the end of email he sends saying...
UK: in some of our messages in which a picture has been pasted, the -
annoying - empty slogan "emacs!" may appear. Please ignore.

Then repeats it in Dutch - so it's obviously been troubling him for some time.

I'll get back.

In the meantime while I'm waiting for him to return to the email - I tried dragging one of his emacs mails into a folder created as you suggested and then saved it to a new folder on the hard drive - Opened it in Notepad.  Edited out all the references to his email and ISP and mine and clipped the source code for the two jpgs short as before and left myself with this pasted section you'll see below.
Incidentally, he tried Base64 Mime and BinHex or something using the different types of attachment encoding and they all came through the transport perfectly to me, but each one of them had the Emacs or the [] so we established that it does it however the mail is encoded.   But I think you may be on to something with this method of attachment thing.
Here's my code I doctored.  See what you can glean from this.
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   äì      rn-Path: <rob@
Received: from mail2.f*******.net ([unix socket])
              Thu, 15 Sep 2005 09:11:05 +0100

 
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.2.3.4
X-Antivirus: AVG for E-mail 7.0.344 [267.10.24]
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="Boundary_(ID_QSVhqn/UrNjB+PVz+gA/LA)"

--Boundary_(ID_QSVhqn/UrNjB+PVz+gA/LA)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit


message ñ  ü
   ó  ôî  ime

pasting copied pic:

Emacs!


end of test 1

--Boundary_(ID_QSVhqn/UrNjB+PVz+gA/LA)
Content-id: <6.2.3.4.0.2***248ada0@pop.planet.nl.0>
Content-Type: image/jpeg; name=11755a4.jpg; x-mac-type=4A504547; x-mac-creator=4A565752
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-disposition: inline; filename=11755a4.jpg

/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wBDAAEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBA

Sometimes I am really slow on the uptake. It took me a while but I have found the source of [] and Emacs!, though why YOU are seeing them remains a puzzle.
First I should clear up one point, the test that I proposed using http://www.imc.org/ietf-822/old-archive2/msg01411.html will not illuminate this problem at all. That will send MIME tests i.e. pictures embedded without html tags as multipart/mixed i.e. different sections of the mail as completely different MIME parts (ignore that if you do not follow). What Eudora is doing is to create an HTML mail with an <img> tag in the html. I do not know how to test that using an external sender.

Regarding the problem, I should have looked more carefully at my own example above. Look at the "alt=" in my example and you will see "[]"
In that example I used the menu to insert a picture inline. In the example below I used cut and paste an image from another application:

This is what it produced in the source of the email:

From ???@??? Fri Sep 23 22:45:00 2005
To:
From: Sanktwo <sanktwo@somewhere.net>
Subject:
Cc:
Bcc:
X-Attachments:
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-Id: <6.2.5.4.2.20050923224440.033507f8@somewhere.net>
X-Eudora-Signature: <<No Default>>
X-EmbeddedContent: <cid:6.2.5.4.2.20050923224440.033507f8@somewhere.net.0=C:\Program Files\Qualcomm\Eudora\Embedded\11142d7b.jpg>

<html>
<body>
some text<br>
<img src="cid:6.2.5.4.2.20050923224440.033507f8@somewhere.net.0" width=1039 height=759 alt="Emacs!"><br>
some more text</body>
</html>

The email should have "some text" followed by an inline image followed by "some more text".
NOTE the 'alt="Emacs!"'  This is an instruction to html interpreters to replace the picture with the characters  "Emacs!" if for some reason the picture cannot be displayed e.g. if the user decides not to view inline pictures or the rendering engine does not handle the file type.

Therefore the source of the characters you are seeing in place of the images is certainly Eudora, though why Qualcomm use these strings I do not know - I have asked on another forum for clarification.  However, the question is 'Why are YOU (and others) seeing the alternative text strings for the pictures and WHERE in your "source" of the email is the <img> tag?'.

Normally such alternative texts are only used if the user has told the end application not to show pictures e.g. in a text-only browser.
If you see inline images from other senders then your settings must permit viewing images inline so it is a puzzle.

I do suspect that what you think of as the "source", pasted above has already been butchered by Outlook Express. For some reason it has decided not to show you .jpg files inline and has already removed the <img> tag inserted by Eudora. You have not recently installed WindowsXP SP2 have you? This might be a Microsoft "security" feature. Remember that Outlook is inextricably linked with Internet explorer, I believe that you cannot separate the security issues of browsing the web and reading your email.
Did your friend mention whether all the !Emacs complainants were using Outlook Express or not?

So, in summary there is no more mystery as to where the characters you see are coming from, it is Eudora; why you are seeing them instead of the pictures and what is happening with your file sizes remain a mystery. I do not use Outlook (historically it was too dangerous and I still do not trust it) so I cannot help in investigating its configuration. Almost certainly though, this is not a Eudora problem except perhaps for the obscure "alt=" text.

If all you are doing is exchanging image files, perhaps the best solution is to avoid this problem and get your friend to send them as attachments and not inline :-))

Just a quick ps...
I am REALLY slow this evening - I have a cold so an excuse...
I only just noticed that your "source" is not html at all; just plain text. Can you get your friend to copy the mail that he sent to an empty mailbox and just check that indeed it is like I posted above... Thanks.

Sorry you're suffering with a cold.  I sympathize.
I'm too tired to take in all that you said above. In fact I don't follow anything except your very clear summary at the end.
In fact I never really remember receiving embedded photos in the text as my friend in Holland doesn't send them like that. I sometimes import images amongst text I am writing to others in case I need to illustrate things without the recipient having to scroll to the end and lose their place in my text.  But I never remember seeing an email myself.
Yes I have installed SP2 but about a year ago.  I know what you mean about it being hand in hand with IE6 and Outlook Express.  It's a pain and always has been. However I have always found other emailers problematical and I've used them all Eudora Pegasus Netscape Mozilla Turnpike even Dos ten years ago and I find Outlook the most convenient to use.

But I think I need you to re-describe what I must ask my friend to do.  I have enough trouble getting him to follow my English and have to re-word things for him to grasp the meaning without problems, and since I'm not actually understanding what you are looking for or what I must get from him, nor what I should send to you, I am in need of the idiots guide to source code before I can carry this out.

I would like to do so. But do you mean copy an email to himself with pictures imported and not attached, and then dump them in a folder on its own, then put the source like I did in Notepad and send the content to you with the headers and idents removed or do you want me to do something else ?
Thanks
Laurie

I just sent an instruction to my friend in Holland but i think we may not get a response from him until Monday at the earliest.

Meanwhile I sent myself an embedded html (rich text) email with photo containing text before the picture and after it and then I attached a photo as well so I had both types in the email.

It arrived and viewed perfectly as sent.  But I appreciate that it may have to be sent from a Eudora source and viewed on an Outlook source.  I don't know yet whether the guy in Holland had any complainants seeing the emacs thing from other receiving email clients than OE.  I hope he'll tell me if he sees the question - it's all rather a lot to cope with.
I still can't fathom this source code thing.  I never saw any alt or [] in your examples above where you mentioned it or below.  I was completely dumbfounded by what you were describing even though I'm sure someone who understands source code would have no problem at all getting at what you were saying.  I'm still none the wiser now.

And additionally why is the word that appears called Emacs?  What does Emacs mean?
I've never seen it in Html lingo.  Beats me.

Cheers

I'm accepting Sanktwo's very comprehensive and hard working response for this problem and awarding the full points because I've got as far as I can with helping the person who wanted to find out what was wrong.
This guy in Holland has done all he has time to do for testing it and I suspect now he'd have to look into faults within Eudora and I think it must be a Eudora problem.

I've used Eudora and Pegasus and Turnpike and Netscape and Outlook and Outlook Express and I have to say I prefer OExpress to all of them.  

My Dutch friend has now gone to Greece for a Holiday so it's unfair of me to keep you waiting to do any more work on this problem - I think I've got all the solution I can get here now.  Thank you for all your contributions - I'll close the question now.
Thanks again.
Laurie