Does anyone use message/external-body?

["Dan Kohn" <dan at dankohn.com>]

For the last several years, all I-Ds and RFCs publication announcements
have included message/external-body attachments to provide for automated
retrieval of the associated document.  This causes very little
distraction for those of us who prefer to use http or mailto URIs, while
providing useful functionality for those using the external-body MIME
type.

However, this raises a question: does *anyone* use external-body in
association with I-D announcements?  External-body was specified in RFC
1341 in 1992, 2.5 years before URIs were first specified in RFC 1738.  I
suspect that the use of external-body has been almost wholly, if not
completely, supplanted.  Of MUAs, I think that at least mh supports the
functionality, but is anyone using it?

And so I'd ask, should this

    Content-Type: Message/External-body;
	    access-type="mail-server";
          server="mailserv at ietf.org"
    
    Content-Type: text/plain
    Content-ID: <2002-11-7160202.I-D at ietf.org>
    
    ENCODING mime
    FILE /internet-drafts/draft-ietf-manet-lanmar-05.txt

Be replaced with:

<mailto:mailserv at ietf.org&body=FILE%20/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-manet-
lanmar-05.txt>

(in addition to the http URI, which is what I believe we all use
anyway).  If there are actually people using the functionality (and who
wouldn't be just as happy with a mailto URI), than I would stick with
it, as it is a minimal distraction for the rest of us.  But if it's no
longer being used, I don't think the ietf-announce list needs to be the
only one using external-body, just because it was invented here.

          - dan
--
Dan Kohn <mailto:dan at dankohn.com>
<http://www.dankohn.com/>  <tel:+1-650-327-2600>  

  Randomly generated quote:
Information is the currency of democracy.  - Thomas Jefferson