Dr. Marshall T. Rose does a useful thing with multi-media e-mail. He mails out each issue of his SNMP-related newsletter, The Simple Times, in these formats:
(SNMP is the Simple Network Management Protocol, having naught to do with MIME or MH per se.)
The process by which Dr. Rose creates an issue of The Simple Times begins with documents in LATEX markup language format. A filter program is applied to strip the LATEX constructs to produce plain ASCII text files. Another filter program is applied to convert the LATEX constructs into richtext constructs. (The plain text and richtext files may require some additional editing to look reasonable.) The PostScript version is the result of applying LATEX to the original version of the document followed by an appropriate PostScript-producing post-processor, such as dvips.
Dr. Rose was kind enough to provide this mhn draft template as an example of how he created the plain text MIME version of Volume 1, Number 4 of The Simple Times:
Reply-to: The Simple Times <st-editorial@simple-times.org> To: The Simple Times Subscribers <st-editorial@simple-times.org> Dcc: st-mime-subscribers Fcc: outbox, simple-times/1.4, /var/lists/simple-times/mime Subject: The Simple Times, volume 1, number 4 #begin [The Simple Times] #begin [Issue Information] Content-Description: Masthead The Simple Times(tm) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Bi-Monthly Newsletter of SNMP Technology, Comment, and Events (sm) Volume 1, Number 4 September/October, 1992 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ #text/plain [READ-ME] ../../lib/mime/read-me.txt #text/plain [Disclaimer] ../../lib/mime/disclaimer.txt #end #begin [Issue Contents] #text/plain [Technical Article] technical.txt #text/plain [Industry Comment] comment.txt #begin [Featured Columns] #text/plain [Applications and Directions]applications.txt #text/plain [Ask Dr. SNMP] faq.txt #text/plain [Security and Protocols] security.txt #text/plain [Standards] standards.txt #text/plain [Working Group Synopses] synopses.txt #end #begin [Miscellany] #text/plain [Announcements] announcements.txt #text/plain [Recent Publications] publications.txt #text/plain [Activities Calendar] calendar.txt #end #end #begin [Administrative Information] #text/plain [Publication Information] ../../lib/mime/publication.txt #text/plain [Submissions] ../../lib/mime/submissions.txt #text/plain [Subscriptions Information] ../../lib/mime/subscriptions.txt #end #end
The structure of the message appears as follows, as shown using mhn -list, with some blank lines and indentation added for slightly easier reading:
msg part type/subtype size description 1 multipart/mixed 93K The Simple Times 1 multipart/mixed 1682 Issue Information 1.1 text/plain 314 Masthead 1.2 text/plain 377 READ-ME 1.3 text/plain 668 Disclaimer 2 multipart/mixed 88K Issue Contents 2.1 text/plain 16K Technical Article 2.2 text/plain 7864 Industry Comment 2.3 multipart/mixed 60K Featured Columns 2.3.1 text/plain 7223 Applications and Directions 2.3.2 text/plain 7568 Ask Dr. SNMP 2.3.3 text/plain 7820 Security and Protocols 2.3.4 text/plain 14K Standards 2.3.5 text/plain 22K Working Group Synopses 2.4 multipart/mixed 3172 Miscellany 2.4.1 text/plain 2345 Announcements 2.4.2 text/plain 118 Recent Publications 2.4.3 text/plain 361 Activities Calendar 3 multipart/mixed 3077 Administrative Information 3.1 text/plain 1032 Publication Information 3.2 text/plain 1155 Submissions 3.3 text/plain 534 Subscriptions Information
The richtext version has the same structure as the plain text version, except that richtext-format files are used in place of the plain text files.
Because the PostScript version is one large file, suitable for printing, the PostScript message doesn't use the full structure shown above for the plain text version; just a single part of type application/postscript is specified:
Reply-to: The Simple Times <st-editorial@simple-times.org> To: The Simple Times Subscribers <st-editorial@simple-times.org> Dcc: st-postscript-subscribers Fcc: outbox, simple-times/1.4, /var/lists/simple-times/postscript Subject: The Simple Times, volume 1, number 4 #application/postscript [The Simple Times] stv1n4.ps