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- From: mime-faq@ics.uci.edu (MIME FAQ maintainer)
- Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime,comp.answers,news.answers
- Subject: comp.mail.mime meta-FAQ: Help for MIME problems
- Supersedes: <mime-faq0_868343401@irvine.com>
- Followup-To: comp.mail.mime
- Date: 8 Aug 1997 06:30:08 GMT
- Organization: Irvine Compiler Corporation - Irvine, CA, USA
- Lines: 394
- Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu
- Expires: 1 Oct 1997 06:30:01 GMT
- Message-ID: <mime-faq0_871021801@irvine.com>
- Reply-To: mime-faq@ics.uci.edu (MIME FAQ maintainer)
- NNTP-Posting-Host: flash.irvine.com
- Summary: This posting contains help for those who have trouble reading
- MIME messages in general, and the comp.mail.mime FAQ in
- particular. Of course, this message is in utterly plain text
- format. No MIME.
- Originator: jsweet@flash.irvine.com
- Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.mail.mime:10711 comp.answers:27481 news.answers:109269
-
- Archive-Name: mail/mime-faq/mime0
- Version: $Id: mime0,v 1.10 1997/02/08 00:32:20 jsweet Rel $
- Posting-Frequency: monthly
- X-Comment: since this is a meta-FAQ, and not part of the FAQ,
- the archive-name is in a separate name space (mime0 instead of
- part0).
-
- --
- =======================
- comp.mail.mime meta-FAQ
- =======================
- Help for MIME problems
- ~~~~~~
- --
-
- Contents
- ~~~~~~~~
- 1) Explanation
- 2) About the MIME FAQ
- 3) Conventions
- 4) Sample Problem Scenarios
- 5) Where else to find the MIME FAQ
-
- --
-
- 1) Explanation
- --------------
- This is the comp.mail.mime meta-FAQ. It's for those who have
- unusually bad problems in dealing with MIME, and thus are unable to
- read the comp.mail.mime FAQ articles, even though they're essentially
- plain text.
-
- This meta-FAQ also offers some general help for those who have
- various kinds of problems reading MIME messages.
-
- Please note:
-
- Questions about mail systems, how to decode MIME parts on your
- computer, and other such issues, if not already answered in the
- FAQ, should be posted to comp.mail.mime or to the info-mime mailing
- list.
-
- Correspondence sent to the MIME FAQ maintainer primarily should
- address information in the MIME FAQ---corrections, additions, or
- suggestions for improvement.
-
- Also: neither the MIME meta-FAQ nor the MIME FAQ are intended to solve
- every possible problem that you might have with your mail system. If
- you have general difficulties with your mail system, difficulties that
- are _not_ specific to MIME, you should consider the possibility that a
- more correct forum for your questions lies elsewhere, such as any of
- these newsgroups:
-
- comp.mail.elm comp.mail.pine
- comp.mail.eudora.mac comp.mail.sendmail
- comp.mail.eudora.ms-windows comp.mail.zmail
- comp.mail.mh
- comp.mail.misc
- comp.mail.mush
-
- --
-
- 2) About the MIME FAQ
- ---------------------
- The comp.mail.mime FAQ itself, aka the MIME FAQ, attempts to answer
- frequently asked questions about MIME, the multipurpose and
- multi-media standard for Internet mail.
-
- The MIME FAQ is divided into nine parts, using the MIME type
- "message/partial". That usually means nothing to MIME-challenged news
- readers and mail user agents, which is usually just fine. The MIME
- FAQ is really just like an ordinary multipart FAQ---it uses plain
- US-ASCII text and can be read like any other ordinary USENET article.
-
- So ordinarily, the MIME FAQ is rendered as ordinary plain-text news or
- mail, which is fine. However, with mis-installed, incomplete, or
- broken software, there are sometimes special problems encountered with
- MIME messages. While this meta-FAQ can't deal with all possible
- problems, this meta-FAQ does enumerate some general scenarios that may
- help you to understand whatever difficulties you're having.
-
- Once again, for emphasis: the MIME FAQ is really just plain US-ASCII
- text. You should be able to read it one way or another. The best
- way, of course, is to get yourself some _working_ MIME-capable
- software. The MIME FAQ is a good source of information for finding
- such software---assuming that you're able to read the MIME FAQ!
-
- If not, read on...
- --
-
- 3) Conventions
- --------------
- In this note, pointers to resources available via the Internet, such
- as references to FTPable goodies, appear in WWW URL format. URLs
- beginning with "ftp:" refer to FTP sites. For example:
-
- ftp://domain.name/path/to/package
-
- Those with FTP access, but without WWW access, may treat such
- references as follows:
-
- 1. Log into host domain.name using anonymous FTP
- 2. Look for /path/to/package
-
- An FTP reference usually lists only the distribution site; please
- try your nearest FTP archive first. Archie may be of some help
- here.
-
- URLs beginning with "http:" refer to WWW servers. URLs beginning
- with "gopher:" refer to gopher servers.
-
- Internet browsing tools, such as Mosaic, know about URLs.
- --
-
- 4) Sample Problem Scenarios
- ---------------------------
- If you have problems reading a message in MIME format, it might be for
- any of the reasons presented in the scenarios below. In the case of
- the MIME FAQ in particular, Scenario 7 may be especially meaningful.
-
-
- Scenario 1:
-
- You have mis-installed, incomplete, or broken software, and it
- absolutely refuses to deal properly with a MIME message of any sort.
-
- You're not necessarily entirely out of luck. Your choices are to fix
- or to replace your software. There are many options available for
- doing this, some of which are covered in the scenarios that follow.
-
- To overcome the immediate problem, you might try to bypass your
- software entirely, and look at the message in its "raw" state.
-
- To read a raw message, save the message to a text file any way you
- can, and use your favorite text editor (emacs, vi, or whatever) to
- read the text file.
-
-
- Scenario 2:
-
- Your mail system outsmarted itself--it can handle some MIME stuff,
- but not whatever it is you received.
-
- For this, you'll either need a smarter mail system, or you'll need to
- tell the mail system how to handle whatever's in the message, or
- you'll need to defeat the mail system entirely, and look at the
- message in its "raw" state, as described in Scenario 1. Scenario 4,
- below, may offer some help too.
-
-
- Scenario 3:
-
- You received a "MIME-like" message that's almost, but not quite,
- entirely unlike a real MIME message. It looks similar enough to a
- real MIME message that it breaks your mail software. The SunOS
- "mailtool" is notorious for sending such MIME-like messages. Early
- versions of Netscape (1.0? --aka "Mozilla") are also thought to be
- guilty of this.
-
- Conversion tools do exist for certain situations, e.g. sun2mime or
- sun-to-mime. Some work, some don't. Whatever you find, it's probably
- worth a try. Otherwise, you'll either have to read the message with
- the same mail program that generated such a thing, or content yourself
- with the raw message.
-
- [ Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> 2-Feb-1996 ]
-
- Q: How to make the Solaris [>=2.4?] OW Mailtool send attachments
- using MIME?
-
- A: Set "send rfc" in your .mailrc.
-
-
- Scenario 4:
-
- Your mail system doesn't understand MIME stuff at all.
-
- For this, you must either content yourself with the "raw" message, or
- you can try to track down some tools to help you. From John Gardiner
- Myers <jgm+@CMU.EDU>, we have this advice:
-
- A minimalist MIME-reading program, munpack, is available from
- this URL:
-
- ftp://ftp.andrew.cmu.edu/pub/mpack/
-
- (i.e. use anonymous FTP to site ftp.andrew.cmu.edu, and look
- in the directory /pub/mpack.)
-
- The munpack program reads MIME messages and writes the decoded
- parts out to files. Versions are available for Unix, MS-DOS,
- Macintosh, and Amiga platforms.
-
- In short, munpack is the MIME equivalent of uudecode/binhex.
-
- { See appendix B.3 of the MIME FAQ for additional information
- about the mpack tool suite. }
-
- To decode a MIME message, first save it to a text file. If
- possible, save it with all headers included. Munpack can decode
- some MIME files when the headers are missing or incomplete, other
- files it cannot decode without having the information in the
- headers. In general, messages which have a statement at the
- beginning that they are in MIME format can be decoded without the
- headers. Messages which have been split into multiple parts
- generally require all headers in order to be reassembled and
- decoded.
-
- Some LAN-based mail systems and some mail providers (including
- America Online, as of the writing of this document) place the mail
- headers at the bottom of the message, instead of at the top of the
- message. If you are having problems decoding a MIME message on
- such a system, you need to convert the mail back into the standard
- format by removing the system's nonstandard headers and moving the
- standard Internet headers to the top of the message (separated
- from the message body with a blank line).
-
- There must be exactly one message per file. Munpack cannot deal
- with multiple messages in a single file, to decode things
- correctly it must know when one message ends and the next one
- begins.
-
- See also Scenario 7, below.
-
-
- Scenario 5:
-
- You don't have all the necessary equipment to listen to an audio part,
- or to view a graphical part, or to read text written in a foreign
- character set.
-
- You're out of luck here; you can handle a lot of MIME stuff on a plain
- old 24x80 ASCII terminal, but let's face it: if you're stuck with
- something like that, YOU LOSE. If someone asks you how to listen to
- an audio message on a 24x80 ASCII terminal, cruel laughter may help to
- enlighten the penitent. ;-)
-
-
- Scenario 6:
-
- You _do_ have the necessary equipment to listen to an audio part, or
- to view a graphical part, such as an audio capable workstation or an
- X terminal, but your software doesn't know how to deal with whatever
- those kinds of MIME contents are.
-
- You may need additional software, such as xv, or audiotool, or
- whatever. If that software came with neither your hardware nor your
- MIME-capable mail user agent or news reader, then you need to go
- treasure hunting on the Internet, or get it from some commercial
- source. After finding and installing that software, you may also have
- to do some additional configuration of your mail system or news
- readers so that they know where to find these additional programs and
- how to invoke them.
-
- Note: the MIME FAQ itself has no graphics or audio in it; it's really
- just plain text.
-
-
- Scenario 7:
-
- Your mail system doesn't want to show a "message/partial" (like the
- comp.mail.mime FAQ articles).
-
- For this, you may need to assemble all the parts of the message
- together. Here is specific advice for various types of mailers:
-
-
- Metamail and other mailcap-based mail user agents:
-
- The mailcap file needs an entry for message/partial. One entry,
- contributed by Tim Goodwin, is this:
-
- message/partial; showpartial %s %{id} %{number} %{total}
-
- The showpartial command is part of the metamail distribution.
- Metamail is available from these URLs:
-
- ftp://ftp.bellcore.com/pub/nsb/mm2.7.tar.Z
- [The core metamail software]
-
- ftp://ftp.bellcore.com/pub/nsb/contrib2.7.tar.Z
- [Contributed software]
-
- ftp://ftp.bellcore.com/pub/nsb/mm2.7.dos.zip
- [MS-DOS binaries]
-
-
- MH:
-
- You can assemble the message together using this command:
-
- mhn -store cur:9
-
- Alternatively, you can view the "raw" message by using this
- MH command:
-
- show -noshowproc
-
-
- { Brief advice for other specific mail systems is welcome. }
-
-
- Scenario 8:
-
- You've saved some MIME messages into files, and you have no idea
- how to read them.
-
- Here is specific advice for various types of mailers:
-
- Metamail:
-
- [ Susan Gruber <sgruber@netcom.com> 13-Dec-1994 ]
-
- This is the command that I used to read my files:
-
- metamail -y filename
-
- MH:
-
- mhn -show -file filename
-
- Pine:
-
- [ "Mark H. Wood" <MWOOD@indyvax.iupui.edu> 18-Mar-1996 ]
-
- pine -F file
-
-
- { Brief advice for other specific mail systems welcome. }
-
-
-
- Scenario 9:
-
- Your mail system has automatically introduced MIME constructs that
- your recipient cannot handle.
-
- This is a tough problem. Ned Freed correctly points out that some
- kind of transformation of your message may be required in order to get
- the message delivered at all. This may occur because the message
- contains 8-bit characters, which won't necessarily get through an
- arbitrary mail system. For another example, your message may have
- been too large and had to be fragmented into smaller messages.
-
- Other possibilities:
-
- - Your message went through a misdesigned or misconfigured mail
- system somewhere along the way. For example, Microsoft Exchange's
- SMTP component incorrectly uses quoted-printable encoding in an
- attempt to control message formatting.
-
- - MIME may not be involved at all; the message may be a "MIME-like"
- message (see Scenario 3, above) that is produced by a broken
- mail user agent.
-
- It may be the case that you and your recipient cannot find a way to
- exchange data via e-mail at all. This is the kind of interoperability
- problem that MIME can help to solve, but of course, compatible tools
- are required on both ends.
-
- Some individuals may try to fall back on uuencode, and that may work
- in some cases, but there are many cases in which uuencode simply won't
- work (see the MIME FAQ for details).
-
- The best solution is for both parties to use correctly implemented
- MIME-aware mail systems, or for both parties to have interoperating
- tools for encoding and decoding data that use base64 or some other
- format that will survive transport through problematic mail gateways.
- The MIME FAQ contains references to many such tools.
-
- --
-
-
- 5) Where else to find the MIME FAQ
- ----------------------------------
-
- - Many sites archive news.answers postings, including these:
-
- ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.answers/mail/mime-faq/
- ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/news.answers/mail/mime-faq/
-
- If possible, please try to find a closer site; for example, by
- asking archie for "mime-faq".
-
-
- - This site makes an HTML version of the MIME FAQ available:
-
- http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/mail/mime-faq/.html
-
-
- ========================================================================
-
- [ end of MIME meta-FAQ ]
-
-