Re: mime and elm (was RE: X-wm question and ZipDrive)
On Tue, 14 Jan 1997, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > My solaris version of procmail is only 249k. munpack and pine
> > are also _very_ available for solaris.
>
> Yes, but not installed, again. What platform is that binary
> from? 250k would be acceptable, I might look into it.
This was on a sparc4, so its an "M".
>
> > > If you're using OpenWindows, the standard mail program `mailtool'
> > > understands MIME. (Couldn't your admins install a system-wide copy of
> > > procmail?)
>
> That would be lovely. Unfortunately, I'm not sure it's going to
> happen any time soon (I don't think they take requests).
> I'm using a character terminal (Telix for DOS to be precise),
> not X/OpenWindows.
>
> > > >True, but I see no advantage in sending absolutely plain text messages
> > > >as MIME when some people (such as me) will complain. When attachments
> > >
> > uuencoding. If text is being sent, it doesn't get encoded by a
> > mime mailer so I don't see what the problem is. If I type on my
>
> Some messages lately have been plain text sent in MIME envelopes
> (not actually base64 encoded). No attachments, just the message.
> For me, this means elm runs metamail instead of the usual pager,
> and metamail is dreadfully unfriendly. What advantage is there
> in sending a straight text message in a MIME envelope? None.
> I do agree with the use of MIME for attachments, although again
> the standard elm doesn't support it.
The reasoning for the MIME envelope is simply
internationalization. Not all messages are 7bit ascii code. All
headers must be though (to be RFC bla bla bla compliant). The
message body gets wrapped in this manner so that 8bit shift-JIS
encoded characters get interpreted correctly (by calling the
viewer specified for that content type). Having a separate
method for dealing with English is extra coding and unnecessary.
I don't know anything about metamail, but it seems that you
should be able to configure elm to _not_ automatically call
metamail, but let you call metamail. One bad mimetype and you
could get a message that automatically installs a trojan horse,
or retrieves a passwd file! In any case, you could probably also
keep a local .mimetypes or .mailcap file around that ignores
Content-Type: text/plain.
> I'd love to, but this isn't my machine and my disk quota isn't
> huge (and occasionally I need my space for compiling C++ etc :-)
> I might just have to relocate my reading of the list to my ISP,
> who has the mime-capable elm. We don't have pine on this server either. :-(
Try talking the SA into installing Pine or making the above mods
to the system wide mimetype or mailcap files. You should be able
to read list mail under solaris 5.5.1!
Richard G. Roberto
richr@bear.com
011-81-3-3437-7967 - Tokyo, Japan
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