Subject: Re: Coded text

From: [email-masked] (fred clark)
Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 14:18:00 -0400

>
>If you are looking at the file with a text editing utility, you will only
>get those indecipheral messages.  Perhaps what you are asking for is a
>viewer, such as Print Shop, or Matisse, or such that will let you view .jpg,
>.gif, .tif, .bmp, and other graphics files.
>
>Dave B

I tried with Photoshop and it wouldn't work either...maybe it's from outer
space???

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From: Michael Spencer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 May 96 02:24:16 EDT

Lessee if I can get this straight:

MIME is a protocol that allows email messages to "contain" data of
several different types, particularly 8-bit data which otherwise won't
be processed correctly by some of the mail gateways or mail forwarders
that transmit email across the internet. MIME allows for data of
different types to be bundled together inside the same email
message. The good news is that, for most people - especially those
using recent versions of mail readers on Windows platforms, you don't
have to know or think about this at all. Your software either decodes
textual data into somthing you can read and displays it or it notifies
you that a data file has been saved.

The message that started this thread appears to have originated from
mailer software that uses a proprietary, possibly 8-bit, format but is
smart enough to translate it into (more or less) universal 7-bit ASCII
before sending it. But It also appears that it appends a copy of the
message in its native format just in case the recipient is using the
same software.

The controversial message had more than one part, as evinced by these
lines in the header:

   Mime-Version: 1.0
   Content-Type: multipart/mixed;

The first part was in a form that is pretty close to being normal
7-bit ASCII, marked by these MIME header lines:

   Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
   Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Some people's mail readers may not process "quoted-ascii" and they'll
see lines with '=' characters at the end of lines and maybe some
characters represented by '=' followed by a 2-digit number. (My mail
reader does this). Others will see normal text.

Then, marking the second part of the message, we find the MIME header
lines:

   Content-Type: application/ms-tnef
   Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

The first one indicates that the following data is meant to be read by
a particular application (piece of software). I don't know what
"ms-tnf" is but it's probably somthing connected with Microsoft mail
ware of some kind. The "base64" means that the data understandable by
ms-tnf has been encoded into mailable 7-bit ASCII by a particular
method. It is the result of this encoding that appears as a bunch of
hentracks to those who don't have base64 unpacking capability integral
to their mail readers. (I don't)

If you don't have that capability, and you encounter blocks of
gibberish marked with the "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64" MIME
header, you need the mpack/munpack package located at URL:

  ftp://ftp.andrew.cmu.edu/pub/mpack

I have this package for DOS. It's available for numerous platforms and
includes documentation and instructions for use.
---

This thread and the annoyance that at least one subscriber has
expressed with it is probably a hint that you shouldn't "attach" files
to mail sent to mailing lists like THEFORGE and not to individuals
unless they've agreed that they have a way to decode the result. Also,
if you think your mailer ware is automatically sending an "attachment"
in base64 (or binhex or uuencode, for that matter), it might be
desireable to try to disable that feature when sending to a mailing
list.

On the other hand, if you need to send a GIF image, word processor
proprietary file or other binary data to a recipient who has confirmed
h{is,er} ability to handle it, "attach" or other MIME-compliant tools
are very handy.

- Mike
-- 
Michael Spencer               (902) 543-8375
[email-masked]
URL: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mspencer/home.html
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