The underlying standard that encodes them doesn't have that barrier, however. The notion of an "attachment" coming at the end of a message is one based on our history of using text-based e-mail clients.
What happens to the 2nd, non-text part is completely up to the client, although it has to at least notify the user that it exists (and should probably be able to at least save it). They should be displayed (or offered to be displayed), on-screen in any mail client that conforms to the MIME *standard* (RFC-2049). In the case of a e-mail with a graphical element "attached" in the middle, there is nothing special about the 1st or 3rd (or any) text parts. A client that is not supporting multipart MIME or that supports it in a way that only displays the text of the first text part is the buggy part of the connection here. In the recipients' mail client(s), which probably claim(s) to be MIME compliant. They are supposed to attach to an email, not interfere with that email in any way. They are called attachments because they are supposed to be attached, not included, enclosed, mixed in, or anything else other than attached. If you drag an attachment into your Mail, doing so shouldn't interfere with the text of your message, for any reason, ever. No one should have to learn or remember to treat Mail differently because it handles attachments differently. It would look, to them, as if my attachment was the last thing in my message. I found that unless I put attachments after all the text, GroupWise users would not receive anything after the attachment.
#MAC OS X MAIL ATTACHMENTS PC#
I work with a lot of PC users, and our office uses GroupWise. The technical reasons why and wherefore don't matter.
If you drag an attachment into your Mail, and there is text after it, and that text becomes separated somehow on the receiving end, then. Of course if you send this to a Mac, it will still work OK.
#MAC OS X MAIL ATTACHMENTS WINDOWS#
This will strip the attachment of the resource forks, which makes it Windows friendly. I accidentally discovered that there is an 'Always Send Windows Friendly Attachments' option in the Attachments sub-menu of the Edit menu which does just this. So I thought this was not possible, and that I'd have to choose it every time. However, there is no option in the preferences to do this for every new message. If, like me, you work in an environment where there are many more PCs than Macs, it's useful to always select the following option when sending an attachment via Mail: Send Windows Friendly Attachments - it's located at the bottom of the Attachment dialog box. I accidentally discovered that there is an 'Always Send Windows Friendly Attachments' option in the Attachments sub-menu of the Edit menu which does just this.