Some tentative notes on using MailConverter with Z-Mail


1. Saving Mail

Z-Mail deletes headers when you chose "Save as Text". To keep the
headers, use "Save as New Folder" which will put the complete message,
including headers, in a new file specified by the user.  This will
probably avoid the "unknown format" dialog.

For more adventurous users, type "help save" in the ZScript window for a
complete list of all the different ways you can get messages out of
Z-Mail into files.


2. Aliases

Z-Mail's alias format is the same as the .mailrc format used by Berkeley
Mail:

    alias alias-name address1, address2, address3<CR>

For addresses that contain comments (any spaces, that is), such as
    "R Shapiro" <rshapiro>
it must be surrounded in single-quotes:
    '"R Shapiro" <rshapiro>'

(Note that a bug to be fixed in Mac Z-Mail version 3.3.1 will allow
aliases to have spaces in them; 3.3.0 and earlier will handle them
correctly unless the user tries to edit them in the Aliases dialog :( ).

They are stored in the Aliases section in the data fork of the user's
Settings file (just a .zmailrc really.  Drop a Z-Mail settings file on
text editor for a blast into the .mailrc past).  By default, that file
is named "Username Settings", though its location depends on how the
sysadmin set things up.

3. Incoming vs Outgoing Mail 

They're all basically the same (see below). The trick is that the
mailbox called "Queued Mail" is magic: any messages in it are treated as
compositions instead of normal messages.  Users should merge their Queues
from other systems into Z-Mail's Queued Mail mailbox.  (The ZScript
variable "mail_queue" stores the path to the magic folder, by default
"Path-to-user's-personal-mail-folder:Mail:Queued Mail").

The one format difference is that queued messages get an additional
header, "X-Zm-Envelope-To:" which simply lists all the addresses in the
To:, Cc:, and Bcc: headers.  For example, here's a simple message in
Z-Mail's Queued Mail folder:

    From davidh Sun Dec 31 18:22:07 1995
    X-Zm-Envelope-To: davidh tester2 abruptly@zen
    From: "David Hartmann" <davidh>
    Message-Id: <951231182207.ZM130551@azure.z-code.com>
    Date: Sun, 31 Dec 1995 18:22:06 -0800
    reply-to: davidh@z-code.com
    X-Mailer: Z-Mail for Macintosh (3.3a.1 07dec95)
    To: davidh
    Subject: This is a test
    Cc: tester2
    Bcc: abruptly@zen
    Mime-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
    Status: OR
    
    Here's some text for the msg body.

You can make your own by starting a composition in Z-Mail and choosing
"Queue", then check the contents of "Queued Mail".

4. Forcing attachment parsing

Attachments are initially parsed when a mailbox is opened. They are then
more thoroughly parsed whenever you read a message containing
attachments.  Unlike Eudora, attachments are not removed from messages
at any time.

So, if a user is converting a mailbox that has had its attachments
stripped out (e.g. a Eudora mailbox), Z-Mail will not find any
attachments. In fact, Eudora messages with attachments have the
beginnings of the MIME structure but no attachments, so Z-Mail reports
in the ZScript window the benign error:
    Reached next message before finding MIME boundary.
    Internal Error: Cannot load attachment, message 2.
    
From your perspective, it might be pretty ugly trying to recreate the
full MIME structure once Eudora has removed it from the message.

For other mailbox types, however, Z-Mail will parse attachments when you
read the message.