Subject: MAC-BINHEX 4.0

From: Richard Gering <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 14:10:14 +0100 (WET)

Hello everyone!

Today we were "fortunate" enough to receive a piece of E-Mail containing 
a file that was sent using the MIME content type "application/mac-binhex40".

I do not know what the advantages of this content type are compared to 
the normal BASE64 encoding (definitely not convenience ;-), but naturally we
don't want to inform the sender that our trusted Pine cannot handle this format.

So, can anyone come to our rescue?  Is there a MAC-BINHEX 4.0 Viewer/Converter
available that can be used with our UNIX Pine?

I'd welcome any pointer on BINHEX for UNIX, including why anyone would want
to use it.

Thanks in advance!

Kind regards,

- Richard Gering.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Richard Gering ([email-masked]) | ...at a time when men were REAL men and |
| CI International B.V.             |  wrote their own device drivers (Linus) |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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From: [email-masked] (Paul J. Schinder)
Date: 14 Nov 1995 18:50:34 GMT

>the normal BASE64 encoding (definitely not convenience ;-), but naturally we

Absolutely none.

>don't want to inform the sender that our trusted Pine cannot handle this format.

Speaking as a long time and current Mac owner, I would *definitely*
tell them that Pine can't handle this format, and *definitely* ask
that it be resent.  If they're using Mac Eudora (very likely), tell
them to send it properly this time by using AppleDouble.  Don't take
no for an answer, and don't let them ever send you Binhex again.  If
anyone ever sent me a Binhex attachement to my Unix workstations,
that's what I'd do (after deleting the thing), and I'm fully equipped
to deal with Binhex on Unix because I own a Mac.  It's trivial for Mac
users to get this right, and if they'd bother to turn on Balloon Help,
Eudora itself would tell them what to use.

>available that can be used with our UNIX Pine?

You can find one in the Info-Mac archives by searching for mcvert:

<http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive.html>

I use mcvert on my Suns and it does the job.  You'll need to use the flag
telling mcvert to separate the resource and data forks.

>I'd welcome any pointer on BINHEX for UNIX, including why anyone would want

The reason that Binhex is used is that Mac files contain two forks,
the data fork and the resouce fork.  The data fork usually contains
the working part of a file (the text of a text document, the gif of a
gif, etc.) and is almost always the only part of the file that would
be of any use on a non-Mac.  The resource fork usually contains very
Mac specific stuff (fonts, icons, etc.).  Binhex is a way of combining
the two forks of a Mac file into a single text file so that it can be
transported through e-mail.  AppleDouble is another, superior way.
AppleDouble separates the data and resource forks into two separate
Base64 encoded attachments.  Anyone on a non-Mac can discard the
resource fork and decode the data fork trivially (it works well in
Pine).  Binhex is ubiquitous in the Mac world, and, unfortunately,
Eudora permits it as one of its encoding choices without putting up a
fuss.  (It should at least notify Mac users with a dialog box that it
shouldn't be used to send mail to people not using Macs.)

--
--------
Paul J. Schinder
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
[email-masked]

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From: Richard Gering <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 16:17:41 +0100 (WET)

I would like to thank everyone who helped us to solve the MAC-BINHEX problem.

It turned out that the person sending us the message didn't even have a Mac.
Instead, he used an old version of PC Eudora that apparently automatically
uses BINHEX for file attachments. It seems that he should upgrade FAST!

Anyway, I've learned to politely ask all people who send BINHEX files to our
Unix system to resend them using BASE64 encoding. You'll learn something new
every day ;-)

Thanks again for all your help!

Best regards,

- Richard Gering.

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From: [email-masked] (Simon Barnes)
Date: 16 Nov 1995 11:04:31 GMT

>I'd welcome any pointer on BINHEX for UNIX, including why anyone would want

There's a Unix program called xbin which decodes BinHex 4.0 attachments;
archie returns plenty of ftp sites.  There may or may not be a way of
invoking it automatically from Pine but at any rate one can always save
the attachment to a file and then decode it.

One hopes that BinHex and uuencode will gradually die out in favour of
base64 or 8-bit binary.

Simon

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From: Sven Guckes <[email-masked]>
Date: 28 Nov 1995 16:29:17 GMT

>One hopes that BinHex and uuencode will gradually die out in favour of

You would not want 8bit everywhere.
After all, how would you display it on screen?
If all characters are allowed then how would you recognize an end-of-line?

And why is base64 better than uucode?  Please tell us!

All it needs is a better integration of codes into programs.
Make that "easier for persons without a clue".

Sven

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 I have read the manual and the faq, but ..."
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--
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