Subject: how to influence Pine about MIME type/subtypes??? (please!)

From: [email-masked] (Jamey Maze)
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 11:37:01 -0500

I'm wanting to use Pine to send binary files around, specifically
WordPerfect 5.1, and Microsoft Word. There are IANA defined MIME
type/subtype's defined for these document types
(application/wordperfect5.1, application/msword). When I upload a
WordPerfect 5.1 file from my PC to my workstation and attach it to a
message with Pine, Pine sends it as test/plain. I need some way to tell
Pine that this file is to be sent as application/wordperfect5.1 with base64
encoding. I'd think you'd do that with some type of mapping from the file
extension (e.g., *.w51 maps to application/wordperfect5.1 with base64
encoding). Does Pine support such mappings or is there an alternate way to
accomplish the same objective?

I would really appreciate your help with this question.

Thanks!

--
Jamey Maze                                      615/574-6355
Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc.            FAX:576-4992
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

"Personally, I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being
taught."               -- Winston Churchill

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From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 09:55:58 -0800 (PST)

Jamey,
We have been struggling with the best way to handle typing of potentially 
ambiguous data.  In some cases, the file extension is the only thing 
available to distinguish the data --but should it be trusted to be correct?

I'm actually surprised that the WP doc ended up as text/plain, rather than
application/octet-stream, but either way we agree that having the official
type recognized is highly desirable.  The existing mechanisms should be
sufficient to get the document to the recipient without corruption (note
that Pine uses B64-encoding even text attachments, to assure their
integrity), but automated processing by the recipient does require proper
typing. 

-teg