Subject: Attachments/MIME

From: [email-masked] (Jackie Robbins)
Date: 18 Jul 1995 22:31:22 GMT

Under our old version of pine, 3.05a, we were able to send attachments
(nothing fancy, just text files) from our RS/6000s (aix 3.2.5) to our
VAXex and Suns and TIs.  We upgraded to pine 3.91, which is really nifty,
but I digress.  Now when we send attachments to our Vaxes, Suns or Tis, the 
receiving machines cannot display the attachment.  The following message 
appears in the mail message:
 
This message is in MIME format.  The first part should be readable text,
while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. 

Furthermore, if the message is forwarded from the receiving non-aix 
machine back to an aix machine, the above message still appears in the 
forwarded mail message, and the attachment cannot be viewed by the aix 
machine any more.

Does anybody know why the other machines see the message as MIME 
formated?  Is the new version sticking some 
super-secret-magic-decoder-ring-type thing in the message?  (neato!)
I don't see any pinerc settings dealing with MIME except where you 
specify an image-viewer.  Didn't see any compile time options relating to 
this either.  Any pearls of wisdom?

Thanks

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jackie Robbins                                                          |
| Computer Services                                                       |
| Georgia Southern University                                             |
| Landrum Box 8136                                                        |
| Statesboro, GA  30460-8136                                              |
|                                                                         |
| Internet Electronic Mail:  [email-masked]                 |
|                                                                         |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 18:10:46 -0700 (PDT)

Jackie,
3.05 is so ancient I had to think for awhile about what it did...  I
believe way-back-then (Summer '92) we didn't yet MIME-encode text
attachments.  The reason we changed to encode all attachments (including
text) was to ensure the integrity of the attached file.  In Internet mail
transport, there can be subtle corruptions of text files which can
sometimes matter (e.g. stripping trailing blanks, tab expansion, escaping
"From " lines, etc), and we felt that anything *attached* should be
delivered without any corruption, even if many times folks aren't so picky
about text files.  That was, after all, a key goal of MIME...

There are two approaches to dealing with this (neither one ideal for folks
who are accustomed to the old behavior):

 o Fix your receiving mailers to be MIME-capable.  (MIME is almost four
   years old now, so it's well past time to do that!)

 o If you want to send text that is *not* MIME-encoded, *include* it in
   the message via ^R, rather than *attaching* the text file.

I suspect the reason the forwarded version of the message doesn't decode
is that it is missing the MIME-Version header, which is essential.
Teaching the recipient mailers to be MIME-aware (e.g. installing the
Metamail package) would also solve this.  There are also stand-alone MIME
encoders/decoders, such as mpack/munpack from CMU...

-teg

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From: [email-masked] (David Mullaney)
Date: 20 Jul 1995 17:21:20 GMT

Jackie  Robbins ([email-masked]) wrote:
<clip>
: Does anybody know why the other machines see the message as MIME 
: formated?  Is the new version sticking some 
: super-secret-magic-decoder-ring-type thing in the message?  (neato!)
: I don't see any pinerc settings dealing with MIME except where you 
: specify an image-viewer.  Didn't see any compile time options relating to 
: this either.  Any pearls of wisdom?

QUICK FIX: Use Ctrl-R to read in your ascii text file rather than attaching
it.  I gave up on attaching files when people on the same network couldn't read
my attachments in xmh.

--
+ DAVID MULLANEY  Email: [email-masked]  (970) 229-7629 +
+                 Mailstop #99, Loctn. 1UN5   -*-  fax 2838 +
+  > Software Engineer -- Ignition/UDL/OSSD         /\/\/\  +
+  > Hewlett-Packard, Ft. Collins, Colorado  _-/\^^/      \ +

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From: Horst_Hanak <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 09:16:44 +0200

>    the message via ^R, rather than *attaching* the text file.

This will only be true, if charters in the included file have only
ASCII values below 128!!! See the remark of 'David L Miller',in an
article 'Re: help with MIME in Pine' in newsgroup comp.mail.pine.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
> On 17 Jul 1995, David L Miller wrote:
> > 
> > Pine 3.91, as distributed, _always_ uses MIME.  Any occurance of a
> > character with an ASCII value of 128 or above will trigger MIME
> > Quoted-Printable encoding.  Pine will only label a message as 
> >ISO-8859-1 > if it includes characters outside of 7bit US-ASCII.
> 
---------------------------------------------------------------------

> > Under our old version of pine, 3.05a, we were able to send attachments

   Horst Hanak
__________________________________________________________________
Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe              E-Mail: [email-masked]
Institut:INFP       Horst Hanak          -------------------------
Postfach 3640                            tel:     +49 7247/82-3353
D 76021 Karlsruhe     / Germany          fax:     +49 7247/82-4624
__________________________________________________________________

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From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 05:32:36 -0700 (PDT)

Yes, sorry: I should have said *plain* text (or limited the context of the
statment to *base-64* encoding.)

Note that it would be a violation of Internet standards to send NON-plain
text without some form of MIME-encoding.

-teg

---

From: [email-masked] (James Boritz)
Date: 21 Jul 1995 12:44:35 -0700

>about text files.  That was, after all, a key goal of MIME...

When pine encounters a unencoded text attachment it happily displays
it. When an encoded text attachment is encountered, the attached text
must be viewed using the view attachment command. 

It just happens that one of the mail systems we use includes
signatures as attachments. Because of pine's behaviour I see the
signature without having to resort to view attachment. Unfortunately
because of the text encoding I cannot duplicate the behaviour.

I also don't think that reading a text file in offers the same benefit
as being able to attach a text file. If text files are read in (using
^R) then the recipient has the burden of breaking the attachments into
parts. If files are attachments then the mail reader handles the
segmentation. Now the people without MIME aware clients are going to
lose somewhere, but because I have read in the text, the people with
MIME aware clients lose as well.

So, it would be nice to be able to have unencoded text attachments.
-- 
                      + 
      Jim Boritz      | Dream-furniture is the only kind on which you never
   [email-masked]   | stub your toes or bang your knee.
U of British Columbia +                            -- C. S. Lewis