Subject: NeXTMail... any chance PINE will learn it?

From: "Timothy J. Luoma" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 10:43:46 -0500

I was just hoping/wondering if PINE would ever learn how to read 
NeXTMail.  I don't get much, but when I do it is quite a hassle to unpack 
it by hand.  

I know there probably isn't a great need/demand for this, but it would be 
nice.  All it would really need to be was something which would uudecode, 
find the uudecoded file, and untar/uncompress it.

Just a thought.
TjL

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From: Ed Greshko <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 00:33:06 +0800 (GMT)

> find the uudecoded file, and untar/uncompress it.

	Well, pine can already do that....  Use the "|" to pipe the mail
to the process that you would normally execute by hand.

	Ed

Edward M. Greshko                       Technical Manager, Electronic Commerce
                                        Control Data Asia/Pacific Region
Voice: +886-2-715-2222 x287             6/F, 131 Nanking East Road, Section 3
FAX  : +886-2-712-9197                  Taipei, Taiwan R.O.C

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From: "Timothy J. Luoma" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 14:08:10 -0500 (EST)

> to the process that you would normally execute by hand.

Yes, I know that.  However, I have to pipe it each time I read the 
message, which is annoying.  NeXT should have made a commandline binary a 
long time ago for reading NeXTMail, but they never did.

TjL

--
       Timothy J. Luoma <[email-masked]> 
NeXT Info Available via email on: PPP under NeXTStep, swapfiles,
swapdisks, hidden dwrites, NeXTStep tricks and shortcuts, NeXTStep FAQ,
and more... For details, send message with subject 'send info'

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From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 15:51:24 -0800 (PST)

> find the uudecoded file, and untar/uncompress it.

I'm not that familiar with NeXTMail, but if the message has a
well-defined string that you could key on, you could write a
"display-filter" script to handle the decoding...

|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing, JE-20
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA

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From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 15:52:57 -0800 (PST)

On Tue, 19 Mar 1996, David L Miller wrote:

> "display-filters" script to handle the decoding...
>

I should have mentioned that "display-filters" are a new feature of
Pine 3.92...

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From: "Timothy J. Luoma" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 09:48:28 -0500 (EST)

> "display-filter" script to handle the decoding...

I don't know what a 'display-filter' script is, or how to write one.

a 'well-defined string' is also a term I do not know.  There is a unique 
header line for each NeXTMail message.  The message itself will be simply 
uuencoded after being tar'd and compressed (the message will be 
message.tar.Z, then message.tar.Z is uuencoded and mailed).

Does that help any?

Thanks for the response...
TjL

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 21:15:27 -0800

> message.tar.Z, then message.tar.Z is uuencoded and mailed).

The basic answer to your message is that no, there are no plans to support
NeXTmail now or in the future.  Even NeXT has abandoned this format in
favor of MIME.

NeXTmail has a serious security problem due to its use of uudecode and
tar; you need "safe" versions of these.  Newer releases of Mail.app from
NeXT contains "safe" copies of both programs, after (as a demonstration to
prove the magnitude of the problem) I put together a piece of evil
NeXTmail that cracks any system which has a user foolish enough to read
the message.

NeXTmail also requires a RTF decoder.  Or rather, a NeXT RTF decoder;
every vendor's RTF is different.

You can pipe the message body to a shell script that will uudecode and
untar it, then execute an RTF viewer.  The new display-filter capability
in Pine 3.92 permits doing this automatically; read the documentation on
display-filter and any good Unix text on how to write shell scripts.

I must say, though, anybody who opens a NeXTmail format message
automatically without any security checks is a much braver man than I.  I
must *emphasize* that the security problem described above is very real,
especially on real NEXTSTEP systems.  We're talking email virus, folks.

-- Mark --

DoD #0105, R90/6 pilot, FAX: (206) 685-4045  ICBM: N 47 39'35" W 122 18'39"
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.