Re: [RFD] Debian's mime support

[Eduardo Marcel Macan <macan@colband.com.br>]

	I am planning on writing an GPL ACL tool for Unix for dealing
with e-mail and attachments. It is intended to let mail pass / be
blocked based on attachment names and file types, besides mail Headers
(and maybe in the future scan file contents for known win viruses), so
I came across the same problems as to detecting the file contents and
take actions based on file types attached.

	The solution I found most promising for this particular project
is to check the identity of the file regardless of mime type/filename
and if that fails check for filename. (If both succeed and both are
different, trust file contents).

	Now I see that there is not a "libfile", it would be very useful
if we rewrote the 'file' program as a library + frontend. That does not
seem to be difficult, and should be very useful since other programs could
use the file database easily without forking().

Regards,

--macan
macan@debian.org

P.S. I am still planning this Mail ACL/Scan project if anyone wants to join
me I welcome contributors, I have a very busy mailserver and my director
got to run the matrix worm three times in fifteen days, so my work in it
is somewhat already justified :)