Subject: Re: Mime

From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 08:46:17 -0400

On Wed, 18 Sep 1996, Douglas Rockwell wrote:

> Do you happen to know what Pine needs to make it able to process Mime
> attachments?
> 
> Whenever I try to process a Mime attachment, it fails, saying something
> about 'metamail'

    Unfortunately, I am not sure just what you mean by "process a Mime
attachment."  Do you mean when you try to make an attachment to a piece
of outgoing mail, or when you receive something that is coming in that
already has an attachment?  I have heard the term 'metamail', but I
know nothing about it, so I cannot give you help there.  Perhaps
someone else on the newsgroup will know.

    Also, as a rule of thumb, when you request help with a failure, you
need to provide as much diagnostic information as you can (better too
much than not enough).  Many people ask, "My car's making a funny
noise.  How do I fix it?"  Probably not the best mechanic in the world
can answer an open-ended question like that.  What version of Pine are
you running?  On what version of what operating system?  How are things
configured?  What is the *exact* error message?  At precisely what
point in the process does the error message occur?  The more
information you provide, the more likely it is that somebody,
somewhere, will be able to help.

Paul                             <[email-masked]>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key 
Home Page:  URL: http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

---

From: Ed Greshko <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 16:26:52 +0800 (GMT)

> someone else on the newsgroup will know.

	metamail was written by one of the authors, Nathaniel Borenstein,
of the original MIME RFC.  It contains a groups of utilities which
assist in the composition and rendering of MIME messages.

	Chances are that Douglas has in his home directory a file
called .mailcap.  This file, which pine accesses, will instrust clients
(like pine) how to render specific MIME types.

	So, if you'd want to use metamail to render the message
then you need to install metamail on your system.  

> somewhere, will be able to help.

	I second that motion!

	Ed

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