[R] R scripts attached to e-mails - correct MIME type ?!

[Stephen Berman]

On Mon, 20 Feb 2017 15:15:27 +0100 Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:

>>>>>> Rui Barradas <ruipbarradas at sapo.pt>
>>>>>>     on Sat, 18 Feb 2017 13:47:02 +0000 writes:
>
>     > Helo, No attachment came through. Change the file
>     > extension from .R to .txt and resend, there aren't many
>     > types of files r-help accepts.
>
>     > Rui Barradas
>
>
> As a matter of fact, one would have to blame the e-mail program
> you use.  The file extension is *not* equivalent to the file
> type, and the mailing list software accepts the (MIME) type  text/plain
> and a couple of others.
>
> The problem with most modern e-mail clients/programs/apps/... is that
> they use something you could translate as  "unknown binary format" 
> as type for their attachments if they can't guess the correct
> file type from the file extension.
> It would be interesting to know (for me) if there are modern
> e-mail programs / web apps which you could *teach* about the
> mime type, e.g., for all files ending with extension '.R'...

Well, there's Gnus in Emacs:

(add-to-list 'mailcap-mime-extensions '(".R" . "text/x-rsrc"))

But I guess you know that ;-)

Steve Berman