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An item for info about encoders and decoders.
44 responses total.
I have been sent a MS-WORD file encoded in "MIME-format". I am told I need a "MIME-aware tool". Where do I find that? The file looks like binhex - but different.
Pine can handle Mime stuff.
I have Pine on several unix machines. How do I apply Pine to this file and obtain a formatted MS-WORD file on my Mac?
If you open your mail file with PINE, PINE should automagically decode the
file that is sent into its original content. You would then download the
file to your mac at home.
---PINES HELP ON MIME FOLLOWS---
PINE 3.07 HELP FOR MAIN MENU page 11 of 26
Page 11
8. What is MIME?
MIME stands for "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions" and it is a
specification for including binary data in Internet mail messages, which
until now have generally been limited to ascii text. MIME-capable
mailers, such as Pine 3.0, allow word processing documents, spreadsheets,
programs, images, audio, and other binary data to be attached to a
message. MIME allows for alternative representations of the same data.
For example, there can be an attachment in text form followed by one
containing bitmap page images of the same information.
MIME-capable mail software is not yet widely deployed, but MIME support
is growing rapidly. If you need to send binary data to colleagues at
institutions not yet supporting MIME, encourage them to talk to their
system administrators about installing MIME tools. MIME software,
compatible with many different mail programs, is freely available (as
is our own Pine mailer.)
Does sending a file with mime still require uuencode, or does MIME take care of that stuff?
Mime will take care of it. In pine, all you do is say that you want to include a file, and it will mime-encode the file and append it to the end of the message. Mime is the same concept as uu(en|de)code, but it is done automagically instead of manually when you send the message.
uudecode wouldn't touch the file, nor would Stuffit-Expander (which someone suggested). Is grex's PINE MIME enabled? Good grief - I have to transfer the file I received on MTS to a unix box to run PINE so I can download a binary MSWORD doc to a Mac. "Multipurpose", indeed! It was suggested to me the Eudora is MIME enabled, but I haven't looked. Thanks for finding this information, curby.
Your welcome. I am sorry if I implied that MIME is uu(en|de)code. It is not. It uses a different algorithm to do the encode and decode. It is supposed to be a standard, but many programs have not yet implemented it. it would be nice if they could get the standard going everywhere.
I ftp'd the file from MTS to caen, which runs pine, and then sent the file to myself, so I could open it in pine. Nada. Just the encoded stuff. There is no mention of MIME (that I could find) in Pine on either grex or caen. Maybe they are MIME-disabled?
Hmmm... Lets see. Try tracing the message back to the most original
source then work from there. That would probably be the message in MTS.
If you have already deleted it from your message area on mts, go to the
file and look up the message id number, then undelete that number. Now
forward the message from MTS to your caen account. In your caen account,
read your mail using pine. If everything worked out correctly, you should
be shown a screen that looks like this:
---INCOMING MESSAGE WITH MIME ATTACHMENT USING PINE---
PINE 3.07 VIEW MAIL Folder:inbox Message 3 of 3 82%
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 1994 16:40:43 -0500 (EST)
From: "Thomas C. Knoeller" <curby@cyberspace.org>
To: "Thomas C. Knoeller" <curby@grex.cyberspace.org>
Subject:
Parts/attachments:
1 Shown 10 lines Text
2 27 bytes File "test", ""
----------------------------------------
This is a test message!
|---------------------------------------------------------|
| curby | curby@cyberspace.org | Thomas C. Knoeller |
|---------------------------------------------------------|
[Part 2, "" Attached file "test" 27bytes]
[Can not display this part. Use the "A" command to save in a file]
---END---
As long as you have the part of the header that says "parts/attachments",
you know that the MIME part is intact. From there, chose the "a" option
then save the part that you are concerned about.
---EXAMPLE SCREENS SHOWN WHEN SAVING---
---ONE---
Enter attachment number to view or save (1 - 2) :
^G Help ^C Abort
RETURN Enter
---TWO---
Save or View attachment? (s/v) [s]
^G Help ^C Abort
RETURN Enter
---THREE--
File (in home directory) to save attachment in: test
^G Help ^C Abort
RETURN Enter
---END--
In order to send a file using the mime feature in pine, all you do is add
the file name where you see the "Attchmnt:". Pine will do everything else
for you.
---SAMPLE COMPOSE SCREEN FROM PINE---
PINE 3.07 COMPOSE MESSAGE Folder:inbox 0 Messages
To :
Cc :
Attchmnt:
Subject :
----- Message Text -----
---END---
Good luck getting the file out.
Great! I'll do this. My department computer guru asked if I could have the sender send the message directly to him on caen (a unix system), so he was onto the same thing. But I should be able to pull the original message from the queue with the message number, as you suggest. I finally did browse down into the help section of Pine and found a brief reference to MIME in item 13., but no instructions (like these). I'll report back.
I hope that this does help. Good luck retreiving the message from MTS. I personally never got along with the MTS system.
This response has been erased.
Are you going to expect such explicit directions about how to use MIME in elm to? 8^) If so, don't expect it quick, 'cause I will have to relearn elm. I haven't used it in about 2 years.
I forwarded the message to my account at caen, where Pine 3.87 runs, and here also, where Pine 3.07. Neither acknowledged the existence of the attached MIME file.
The current pine is 3.89. It will be installed here soon, I hope.
Trvial progress. The "A" command is supposed to decode the MIME encoded attachment. It asked where to save the result, but it did not decode. The MIME part of my message appears not to be an *attachment*, but in the message body. Can this be why Pine is not decoding it?
You could try Exporting the message and sending it to yourself as an attachment...or would that encode it twice?
I was hoping someone would respond with the answer to that!
re#18: I think that that would just put you back in your original state. Hmmm... Maybe MTS does something to the header so that other mail programs won't recognize the attached part as being an attachment. It sounds like it is time to try giving (76)4-help a call. Tell them all the steps that you have used so far, and maybe they will be able to give you a suggestion about why it hasn't worked. My suggestion as to the next step is to have the original sender re-mail it to a system where you can access a MIME capable mail program.
In my expirence, better to send mail to online.consulting.help@um.cc.umich.edu than call 764-HELP. I get real sick of that music on hold after 20 minutes.
Well, rane, try sending it to yourself (I suggested exporting it to a file so you could edit out any non-attachment text, though if you have a file with only the attachment already, you're set). My thought was to get Pine to recognize it as an attachment, since Pine apparently doesn't do so when the attachment is in the body of the message. If it doesn't work, well, then you know. I'm pretty sure MTS $message won't like an attachment, though I could be wrong about that. Take curby's advice and give 4-help a call, especially since you're faculty and can do so without much hassle. kaplan's suggestion is also good; I usually get a response within an hour. You're going through a really great process/feature of the new computing environment at UM, one that the powers that be don't like to face (except to say you're a fool for trying to do what you're doing). I generally send such indecipherable messages back to the sender and ask them to encode the message in a way that I can easily decode without searching the world over for conversion programs. Hell, at this point they probably could have snail-mailed you a disk...
But MIME is supposed to be a standard that is on most machines now. Just because MTS is from the 60's (flower children, vw buses, and non-lethal narcotics), doesn't mean that you should blame the sender for using it.
Excuse me, but I don't do Windoze, Word for Windoze, etc. If you send me something in a format that requires me to use a machine and software I have neither the time nor desire to learn to use, you'll get the file right back with a message saying it should be sent in something the receiver (me) wants to decode. I probably should't even take the time to send such things back. In the sense that good communication is tailored to the audience and involves feedback, you'll find that sending things so that the receiver can decode them easily given the receiver's equipment makes for more effective communication. And having an arranged common communication system makes for easier feedback. Since you don't believe this makes good sense, you of course, send audio tapes with voice frequencies shifted out of the range of human hearing...etc. and then blame the listener/receiver for not being able to decipher your message. And BTW, don't assume that MTS has all the modern bells and whistles. Given that 90% of the MTS system programmers were laid off, I mean RIF'd, there are few people around to add such niceties as MIME to the message system, and even if there were, ITD's policy is that such development on MTS not take place.
This response has been erased.
The sender may nnot have been familiar with the MTS system.
Part of this is "how common is common" and "how standard is standard"? Just because someone defines a standard like MIME does not make it universally acceptable. popcorn if you make me jump through hoops to convert a Word for Windoze document (not the same as as a Word document) I'll likely be in a pretty terrible mood by the time I get readable text...not, most likely, what the sender intends. Knowing your audience is still important even in the electronic age. Some people will have strange/incomprehsible preferences for ASCII text when "everyone" is tossing WfW documents around. Send me a WordPerfect 5.0 document and I'll be happy ;) Even safer, send me an ASCII message asking how I'd like the document to be encoded...
I have all the suggested "feelers" in motion. There is something weird about the "attachment" to pine mail, since it is not seen when you receive the read the message, and must be separately invoked within pine. I can well imagine the MTS mail system getting that screwed up. I have asked for another copy to be sent to someone on a unix machine - it could be me now, having learned what I have learned. I've been sent a test message with a MIME attachment, and pine opens it very nicely, and you have the choice of viewing or saving the attachment - but it doesn't tell you (I think) whether its viewable or only saveable. There is some connection (which I don't understand yet) between AppleDouble and MIME - and I do have an AppleDouble interpreter, which I picked up to see what it was. Maybe it will work on a MIME listing!
Having another copy sent directly to a unix machine sounds like a winner...provided you have the knowledge and facilities to decode it (which it sounds like you do). MTS has been known (in my experience) to do some very subtle changes under some file transfer conditions which may be causing problems...it would be interesting to hear what 4-HELP/online.consulting have to say about this problem. Good luck...
caenhelp has been "working" on it for a week, now. I didn't think of asking online.consulting, as it hadn't occured to me that it was an MTS problem. Now, I think it is.
Heh...I wonder if I ever did decode that thing? Anyway, I have another one. I have a better handle on how to proceed if I know what I'm dealing with, so can someone identify the following snippet of an appended encoded Excel spreadsheet? I *suspect* it was done in a Windows environment - but what is the encoding? //BEGIN BINARY MAIL SEGMENT: begin 0644 CURL.XLS MT,\1X*&Q&N$ .P # /[_"0 & ! M 0 $ @ $ #^____ #_____________ M____________________________________________________________ M____________________________________________________________ M____________________________________________________________ M____________________________________________________________ M____________________________________________________________ M____________________________________________________________ M____________________________________________________________ M____________________________________________________________ M____________________________________________________________ M_______________________]_____O____[___\$ _O___P8 .....etc.....
The encoding appears to be uu, as if it was done on unix, or emulating same. If you have this file on grex, try uudecode on it. You should get a file named CURL.XLS which you should download in binary mode to a Windows machine with Excel. Alternately, you could d/l it to a PC as text, and run the uudecode.com for DOS on it. Theres a way on a Mac , too, using UULite shareware.
Right. That "0644" is a Unix permission mask (rw-r--r--), and the format of the line in which it appears is normal for uuencode. But it could well have been produced in a DOS/WIN environment by a product supporting uuencode - I've seen this. From the fact that the output file is to be named CURL.XLS, I'd presume that either you made it or someone made it specifically for you, Rane.
It was made for me, and I did think that the .XLS implied it is DOS based. My department guru decoded it and presented me with a Mac Excel file, but I haven't learned what he did to do it. I'll experiment with your suggestions.
My guess is that he ran uudecode on it (on some platform) producing a DOS Excel file, which he imported into Mac Excel, and then wrote out as a Mac file. I'm only guessing, but that's what I would have done.
He downloaded it and ran a uudecoder on his Mac. I had fooled around doing that but it would not open. Turned out it was written on Excel 5, and my computer has only Excel 4. I got the impression that Excel files are the same for DOS or Mac, except that I had to tell my uudecoder that the creator was XCEL - I don't yet understand the data and resource fork stuff, but does this mean that being a DOS Excel file, it had no resource fork, while if it had been a Mac Excel file, the resource fork would have been with it - but otherwise the data forks are the same?
Quick excursion into Mac File Land: There are three bits of information about Mac files. (1) the data fork - generally this is a match to what you find on a PC file (2) The resource fork - a separate file containing mac-specific data (3) The "finder info" - info about the file stored in the directory Macbinary form (and hqx form) take the contents of all 3 and puts them in a single binary (text) file so they can be shipped around. (end excursion) Telling your uudecoder that the type was EXCEL is really supplying info that goes in the "finder info" not the "resource fork". That's a technical detail, but I didn't want to just say "yes" and mislead you. I suspect, but do not know for certain, that the resource fork of a MAC Excel file is empty. And that the data fork matches the binary representation on a PC.
Word, and therefore I assume Excel also, uses the same file format between Windows and Mac. However, that's only with current versions. Excel is up to 7.0 now, which means the current Mac version is probably 6.0 (Microsoft didn't do a Mac version of the latest version of Office). With Excel 4, who knows what it would be compatable with.
The current Mac Excel is 5.0. I then presume what I got was a PC Excel 7.0 file, which can be read by the current Mac version, but not 4.0. I've found that RTF in Mac and PC WORD is very compatible between versions - too bad there isn't an Excel equivalent.
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