Looks like someone didn't set up their MIME types right. I get it, though, email is a terrible protocol to work with if you're trying to do anymore more complicated than sending a plaintext message.
At least they didn't hit you with one of those winmail.dat files!
My HR told me I could no longer email bills, but instead had to give them the original paper. I'm afraid somebody there will have a heart attack when I tell them that that PDF file is the original.
yeah it uses this really neat semantic rendering programming language for serving structured documents across servers
It's a bit tricky, but anyone with at least a Masters in CompSci should be able to parse some of it enough to get the gist. Bear in mind that the "source" is abbreviated to src, and "image" similarly. The rest is coding that gives the computer instructions, you'll also need to replace FILENAME in the code with the actual filename. It goes like this
Multi-part MIME containing inline images is actually what you're looking for and it's fairly easy to implement.
Here's an example. They handwave over the html section that actually refers to the inline images that they embed, but that's the basic layout you need.
I feel like the level of snark in your reply is... High. It doesn't make for a pleasant interaction, and it doesn't help make lemmy a nice place to be.
So, if the image you want to put into your email is not hosted somewhere, what's the best way to go about this, ensuring compatibility?