HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime,comp.infosystems.wais
Subject: Re: Using MIME without extra mail headers
Date: 11 Jan 1993 04:15:10 GMT
Organization: Msen, Inc. -- Ann Arbor, Michigan
NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.msen.com
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]

Stephen C. Trier (trier@odin.ins.cwru.edu) wrote:
: Well, as has been said, MIME is in use in the Gopher community, where it
: is defined as "a file starting with MIME headers".  I have heard suggestions
: for its use with WAIS, though I think that idea fizzled.  It works with
: Gopher because Gopher already presumes that all text transactions are done
: in US-ASCII or a superset like ISO-8859-1.  Gopher also provides for 8-bit
: binary data.  I don't know which of the two is used by MIME.

There are WAIS servers with MIME encoded data in them - one at Inria,
for example, that has text and pictures in it.  I would not say "fizzled"
would be the right word to describe the reactino to it - the limitation
is much more that good MIME composition tools are just now starting to
show up, and the rare combination of a site that is both up to date on
MIME and up to date on WAIS means the expected audience for a server like
this is small.  (This is of course changing as more MIME stuff gets released,
and as MIME gets worked into gophers.  It takes time.)

(:source 
   :version  3 
   :ip-address "138.96.32.21"
   :ip-name "zenon.inria.fr"
   :tcp-port 210
   :database-name "disco-mm-zenon-inria-fr"
   :cost 0.00 
   :cost-unit :free 
   :maintainer "djossou@charly.inria.fr"
   :description "Server created with WAIS release 8 b3.1 on Mar  2
17:21:14 1992 by djossou@zenon
The files of type mime used in the index were:   /1/wais/files/disco-mm

Base Multimedia des CDs de l'Agos

Cette source contient des documents MIME (*) decrivant les CD de L agos
a l INRIA SOPHIA
Pour chaque CD vous aurez droit a :
 - Une fiche descriptive
 - L'Image de la pochette
 - 20 sec d'enregistrement d'un morceau representatif

Comme la source disco-charly-inria-fr  cette source permet
de faire des recherches sur:

  - le genre: classique, lyrique, jazz, pop, variete francaise/etrangere
  - l'auteur: ravel, jarrett, somerville, sheller...
  - l'emprunteur (pour savoir ce qui reste chez vous)

Bonne ecoute,
Coco D & GG.

(*) Les documents MIME sont visualisables avec un produit tel que metamail
au besoin ajoutez a votre .Xdefaults la ressource X:

      Xwais.filters: MIME,metam

ou metam  est le script suivant:

#!/bin/sh
xterm -T Metamail -e /bin/sh -c \"metamail $1;sh\"

NOTA: Cette base est en cours de constitution et ne contient pas encore tous les
     CD de la base officielle disco-charly-inria-fr
"
)

  Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, Msen Inc. emv@Msen.com
        Msen Inc., 628 Brooks, Ann Arbor MI  48103 +1 313 998 GLOB

Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
From: "David Herron" <david@twg.com>
Subject: Re: Using MIME without extra mail headers
Sensitivity: Personal
Encoding:  17 TEXT 
Conversion: Prohibited
Organization: The Wollongong Group, Inc., Palo Alto, CA
Conversion-With-Loss: Prohibited
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 20:24:28 GMT

> Is there any convention for transmitting MIME messages if extra
> mail headers (Content-Type etc.) cannot be used for one reason or
> another?  Do any mailers understand messages whose first (text) line
> begins "MIME-Version..." or something?

Eek!

"No".

MIME subsumes/defines the meaning of messages without Content-Type: to mean
that they contain US-ASCII.  So you'd be breaking the spec's to transport
things which weren't US-ASCII-clean ... (naughty, naughty)

I don't understand how you wouldn't be able to insert Content-Type:'s
into the header..?

	David
From: rrr@svl.cdc.com (Rich Ragan)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
Subject: Re: Commercial MIME products
Date: 11 Jan 93 00:12:57 GMT
Reply-To: rrr@svl.cdc.com
Organization: Control Data Corporation, Silicon Valley Operations

In <syscrc.726294707@gsusgi1.gsu.edu> syscrc@pickle.gsu.edu (Randy Carpenter) writes:

>Are there any?

The FAQ for this group has a section that lists some
Commercial MIME offerings. Check it out.

Rich Ragan (Richard.Ragan@cdc.com)
--
Richard R. Ragan   rrr@svl.cdc.com     (408) 496-4340 
Control Data Systems, Inc. - Silicon Valley Dev. Div.
5101 Patrick Henry Drive, Santa Clara, CA  95054-1111
Control Data 4000 Systems -- Servers with Distinction
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
From: jsweet@irvine.com (Jerry Sweet)
Subject: Re: Using MIME without extra mail headers 
             <1993Jan7.191810.1857@infodev.cam.ac.uk> 
Organization: Irvine Compiler Corp., Irvine, California, USA
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 23:32:09 GMT
To: ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant)

> Is there any convention for transmitting MIME messages if extra
> mail headers (Content-Type etc.) cannot be used for one reason or
> another?

I don't think there's a convention, but as a work-around you could use
RFC 934 encapsulation of the MIME message and invite the recipient to
burst out the MIME message...
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
From: ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant)
Subject: Re: Using MIME without extra mail headers
Organization: U of Cambridge, England
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 20:52:13 GMT

In article <C0r79G.2BM.2@cs.cmu.edu> ddj+@cs.cmu.edu (Doug DeJulio) writes:
>beginning of the body would work.  BUT, I would assert that this is
>still a gateway problem.  The gatewaying software should take a
>correct MIME message and convert it into something that the broken
>domain can understand, and it should make sure that any hacked-up
>format is converted back into pure MIME before sending it back out
>through the gateway again.  The fact that the MIME standard is well
>defined should simplify the task of writing such a "smart gateway"
>somewhat.

Yes, this is fine as long as you have precisely one gateway - then the
gateway can invent any rule it likes and enforce that on all the users
who want to send out MIME messages to SMTP or X.400 domains.  The problem
is when there are gateways all over the place.  Anyway, what is this
insistence on gateways?  It would be quite reasonable for two people
within a non-MIME-header-capable domain to want to send MIME files to
each other.  So a single convention for encapsulating MIME in files is
the object here.

Perhaps some of our American readers should try talking to their BITNET
colleagues if they have trouble with the idea of non-MIME-header-capable
message transfer domains.
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
From: "David Herron" <david@twg.com>
Subject: Re: Using MIME without extra mail headers
Sensitivity: Personal
Encoding:  30 TEXT , 4 TEXT 
Conversion: Prohibited
Organization: The Wollongong Group, Inc., Palo Alto, CA
Conversion-With-Loss: Prohibited
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 19:20:02 GMT

ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant) writes:
> My problem is
...
>   (b) that I seem to be unique in thinking that MIME could be a general
>       solution for all kinds of file structuring applications, such as
>       those currently handled by ODA, SGML and various ad hoc encodings,
>       or by context, or by making guesses based on file content or file
>       name, in applications where the concept of "headers" is not present.
>       For example I see no reason why program source code should not use
>       the MIME tagging mechanism to indicate which language it is in, and
>       cause the appropriate compiler to be invoked on its content.

Well.. if you'd mentioned this initially it might've saved some problem.. ;-)

It's been pointed out that the gophers and waisers are using MIME in
non-mail applications.

MIME could be a file structuring thing as you're suggesting.  It's was
designed with mail systems in mind but I can't think of many things which
are unique to them.  The most obvious is encoding anything not 7-bit clean.

But why is MIME *uniquely* suited to this purpose?  The MacIntosh
environment, for example, has its own way of tagging which compiler
to use.  I personally would like to use SGML to edit my source
files, have an SGML->particular-language translator, etc.  It would
do Knuth's ``literate programming'' one better by using a widely accepted
standard markup language at least.  But this is orthogonal to the issue
of whether there should be a header in the file marking what kind of
file it is.


<- David Herron <david@twg.com> (work) <david@davids.mmdf.com> (home)
<-
<- "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them."
<- Karen Hargrove of Microsoft quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial.
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
From: ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant)
Subject: Re: Using MIME without extra mail headers
Organization: U of Cambridge, England
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 19:41:16 GMT

In article <1ise90INN7qk@nigel.msen.com> emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti) writes:
>Would it not be simpler and more expedient to work on the wone
>gateway that doesn't know how to handle MIME headers right, than
>to hack up 100 MIME-ready clients to implement some nonstandard
>options?

I will say for the last time (applause) that this is not a problem with
gateways, but with mail _domains_.  Some domains simply don't allow for
headers other than a selected few. By asking for those domains to use
MIME headers, you are asking for the rework of hundreds of mail transports
on dozens of different systems, some of them 'legacy' systems in which
the relevant code is frozen.

I will cease commenting on the use of MIME for non-mail applications, as
obviously people just aren't interested. Roll on ODA and SGML.
From: davidm@consilium.com (David S. Masterson)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
Subject: Re: MIME in NEWS?
Date: 11 Jan 93 06:59:30 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Consilium Inc., Mountain View, California
In-reply-to: vances@xenitec.on.ca's message of 10 Jan 93 14:56:06 GMT
X-Posting-Software: GNUS 3.13  [ NNTP-based News Reader for GNU Emacs ]

Since the talk has strayed into rich text in news reading, I'd like to ask
about all those people who read the news via dialups to a main system.  Rich
text is going to make it very hard for these people to read the news.  Is
anyone considering this (ie. is rich text still readable if you don't have a
rich text reader)?
--
====================================================================
David Masterson					Consilium, Inc.
(415) 691-6311					640 Clyde Ct.
davidm@consilium.com				Mtn. View, CA  94043
====================================================================
"Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation to which the filing system
 has been lost?"
-- Quentin Crisp
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
From: ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant)
Subject: Re: Using MIME without extra mail headers
Organization: U of Cambridge, England
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 19:36:41 GMT

In article <wBk7wB2w165w@blues.kk.sub.org> kosta@blues.kk.sub.org (Kosta Kostis) writes:
>What's your problem changing header lines? Maybe we can help you to
>do this somehow.

My problem is
  (a) that half the time my mail domain is neither RFC 822 nor X.400,
      and does not allow arbitrary header fields;
  (b) that I seem to be unique in thinking that MIME could be a general
      solution for all kinds of file structuring applications, such as
      those currently handled by ODA, SGML and various ad hoc encodings,
      or by context, or by making guesses based on file content or file
      name, in applications where the concept of "headers" is not present.
      For example I see no reason why program source code should not use
      the MIME tagging mechanism to indicate which language it is in, and
      cause the appropriate compiler to be invoked on its content.
From: trier@slc6.ins.cwru.edu (Stephen C. Trier)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
Subject: Re: MIME in NEWS?
Date: 11 Jan 1993 19:39:36 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH (USA)
Distribution: comp
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc6.ins.cwru.edu

In article <DAVIDM.93Jan10225930@consilium.com> davidm@consilium.com (David S. Masterson) writes:
>Rich text is going to make it very hard for these people to read the news.  Is
>anyone considering this (ie. is rich text still readable if you don't have a
>rich text reader)?

Well, what's the problem with a dialup?  If you have a decent terminal,
your newsreader will display richtext formatted for the terminal.  There's
nothing that says you need a windowing system to use MIME and richtext.
(At least I hope there isn't, since we've been using it on MS-DOS.)

Minimum-level richtext processing can just do word wrap and strip the other
formatting codes.  Obviously, doing some sort of bold/underline/centering
is really nice, but you could read richtext, in its strip-the-codes form,
on an ADM-3A.

Of course, there's also the issue of human readability.  You can read rich-
text, even without stripping the codes.  It's not the greatest, but it's also
not illegible.  Keep in mind that most letters/articles don't use too much
fancy formatting, so there won't be too many richtext codes for your brain
to process.

-- 
Stephen Trier                      "We want to offer you a price that you
Network software type               just can't afford to take advantage of."
Case Western Reserve University         - Sales blurb from HSC Software
trier@ins.cwru.edu
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
From: yu@cs.ucf.edu (Henry Yu)
Subject: Add me to the mailing list
Summary: add me to the mailing list
Keywords: mailing list
Organization: University of Central Florida
Distribution: comp.mail.mime
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 19:03:19 GMT

Please add me to the mailing list.

Henry Yu

email:	henry@escact.ksc.nasa.gov

Thank you very much.
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
From: syscrc@pickle.gsu.edu (Randy Carpenter)
Subject: Commercial MIME products
Organization: Georgia State University
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 04:31:47 GMT

Are there any?

-- 
===========================================================================
Randy Carpenter                    rcarpent@gsu.edu          % Got a light?
Georgia State University           (404) 651-2648            No match.
Wells Computer Center                                        %
From: Jason@jasons.frontiertech.com (Jason A. Beyer)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
Subject: Re: Commercial MIME products
Date: 6 Jan 1993 23:11:28 GMT
Organization: Frontier Technologies Corp.
NNTP-Posting-Host: jasons.frontiertech.com

Frontier Technologies announced that it will include MIME extensions for
its Super-TCP for Windows E-mail software at the end the end of this
month.  Super-TCP for Windows is a WinSock-compliant, 100% DLL implentation 
that also includes the following applications: NNTP News Reader, Telnet,
NFS Client/Server, FTP Client/Server, and more.  

For direct information, send E-mail to tcp@FrontierTech.com.

Jason A. Beyer
Frontier Technologies Corp.
From: edmbv@alf.uib.no (Bj|rn Asle Valde)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
Subject: Re: Frequently asked questions about MIME
Keywords: NeXT mime man-or-beast
Date: 5 Jan 93 15:26:40 GMT
Organization: SiO Data Bergen, Norway

In article <1992Dec16.134914.2910@ugle.unit.no> harald.alvestrand@delab.sintef.no writes:
>Ed,
>BEAUTIFUL!
>But of course it needs some work.

[..deleted..]

>
>I don't know enough about NeXT to know whether it is an UNIX or a strange
>beast, though I suspect the latter....
>                ^^^^^^^

Harald, if you delete one line in the NeXT's inittab (so that the
windowing system doesn't start) you'll end up with something very
close to 4.3BSD - It's definitely much cleaner than aix, ultrix,
sunos and a few others that I've had the pleasure/horror (depending
on mode and needs) to work with.

I would not use a next if it didn't have the display postscript 
windowing system so I can't really recommend to not start the
NeXTSTEP environment. The bundled gcc, gdb etc. is in my view
a fine thing. I don't have time to install it on every machine I
use so it's a good thing it's just there...

The next have for a long time had a very nice, free, MIMEmailer.
I use it every now and then instead of the next supplied "nextmail"
with m-m extensions. I wish next would drop their m-m mail format
in favour of MIME, and I've asked them to consider that option.
Anyways, you can still do it the mime way if that's your choise.

Harald, I don't think any of these factors make the next a beast.
You can't really rely on what I say 'cause the company I work for
sell next (among other un*x bokes)... 

Cheers ;-)
>-- 
>                   Harald Tveit Alvestrand
>Harald.Alvestrand@delab.sintef.no
>C=no;PRMD=uninett;O=sintef;OU=delab;S=alvestrand;G=harald
>+47 7 59 70 94

Mvh, -bav
-- 
   ,__o   Bjorn Asle Valde	SiO Data NeXTSenter	tel +47-5-317041
 _-\_<,   valde@SioData.uio.no	Christiesgt. 13		fax +47-5-320238
(*)/'(*)  			N-5015 Bergen, Norway
From: thomas@graphics.ap.mchp.sni.de (Thomas Oeser  SNI AP 153 )
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
Subject: Are there `base64' analoga to uuencode/uudecode out there?
Date: 12 Jan 1993 16:49:48 GMT
Organization: Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG
Distribution: world
Reply-To: thomas@graphics.ap.mchp.sni.de (Thomas Oeser  SNI AP 153 )
NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.67.55.3

I'm looking for (public domain) sofware implmenting base64 en-/decoding similar
to the (standard) UNIX commands uuencode and uudecode!


-- Thomas Oeser

Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG, SNI AP 153
W-8000 Muenchen 83, Otto-Hahn-Ring 6, Germany
Tel.:   + 49 (89) 636-47537
FAX:    + 49 (89) 636-45962
E-mail: Thomas.Oeser@graphics.ap.mchp.sni.de
X.400:  c=DE;a=DBP;p=SNI-SMTP;o=de;ou1=sni;ou2=mchp;ou3=ap;ou4=graphics;
	s=oeser;g=thomas
From: erik@poel.juice.or.jp (Erik M. van der Poel)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
Subject: Re: Using MIME without extra mail headers
Date: 12 Jan 93 16:58:28 GMT
Organization: sometimes

In the following, I defend a point of view that I'm not sure I hold
myself, simply for fun.


> > This is a gross hack but it would be of practical benefit to those 
> > people who are in the same position as Alasdair.
> 
> No, it will not be of benefit to such people, at least not in the long
> term.  Such a kludge would do two things:
> 
> 1) Remove the incentive to get the broken gateways fixed.  Once
> established, such an "interim" convention would never go away.

A convention that never goes away?  Hmmm...  Sounds like a solid
standard to me...


> 2) Encourage people to generate messages of this form.  Such messages
> are not in MIME format and will not be interpreted by many correct
> MIME implementations.

I'm not sure if the story went exactly like this, but:  A while ago,
the author of the "make" tool wrote the first version of his program
and distributed it among a few colleagues.  It turned out that he had
made the unfortunate choice of requiring a tab at the beginning of a
line containing the "action" part of the rule.  Some programmers found
this confusing when spaces were rejected by the program.  However, the
author discovered that he had as many as 7 users, so he refrained from
changing the spec.

Look where that got us today.  (I should add, though, that "make" was
a great accomplishment and I use it a lot, like it, etc.)

Now, the fully anticipated reply to this is that there are too many
MIME programs out there _and_ being used already, and that it is
easier to change the "small" number of installations of programs that
violate the set-in-stone MIME spec.  (Though it's still in the
"Proposed Draft" stage.)

Easier?  Easier for whom?  Exactly how many such "broken" and
unupgradable systems are there out there?  How do we know which is
easier to upgrade: the "broken" gateways, or the relatively new
MIME implementations?  It's mostly just a matter of convincing people.

Alasdair, if you feel strongly about this, I suggest you keep pushing,
perhaps even on the MIME mailing list (to join, send mail to
ietf-822-request@dimacs.rutgers.edu).  If people still don't agree
with you, you can still give it a shot anyway, and get the people that
_do_ agree with you to install programs following your spec.  If it is
successful, you have created a de facto standard.  That's the way it
works.

By the way, I think you have pointed out an actual flaw in the MIME
spec (though it has been pointed out before).  I mean, it's a clear
contradiction: Base64 was designed to be transmissible through any
system, but the headers identifying it as such were _not_ designed to
be transmissible.  (I have actually experienced header stripping in a
mailing list server.  I.e. a program that I cannot control directly.)

Disclaimer: I do not represent "juice".  The above are my opinions only.
-
-- 
Erik M. van der Poel                               erik@poel.juice.or.jp
From: pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
Subject: Re: Using MIME without extra mail headers
Date: 13 Jan 93 02:29:30 GMT
Reply-To: pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Organization: Prifysgol Cymru, Aberystwyth

On 10 Jan 93 21:31:55 GMT, kosta@blues.kk.sub.org (Kosta Kostis) said:

kosta> (Alasdair Grant) writes:

Alasdair> Is there any convention for transmitting MIME messages if
Alasdair> extra mail headers (Content-Type etc.) cannot be used for one
Alasdair> reason or another?  Do any mailers understand messages whose
Alasdair> first (text) line begins "MIME-Version..." or something?

Good question, and good subsequent discussion. In particular I agree
with your idea that MIME can be used outside RFC based mail, for non RFC
based mail, or indeed for any sort of document encoding.

kosta> The MIME-headers should be in the headers only.

Is is so difficult to contemplate that this is not an option in some
mail systems, which are *not* RFC based, and have nothing to do with the
Internet? The Internet is large, but it is only one of many mail
domains.

kosta> Well, "my ideal" MTA would only analyse the headers of a message
kosta> needed for routing (if at all), transfer everything without
kosta> changing any bit (except adding "Received"-lines perhaps) and
kosta> forward the message to next next MTA on the way to the
kosta> receipient.

Within the Internet this is (barely) possible; within other mail systems
it is not. All they undertake is to deliver message bodies.

kosta> It's the MUA's job to interpret the content of the message, only,
kosta> but the MUA must know about the encoding used and stuff like
kosta> that.

kosta> but you'll have to tell your MUA manually to convert the message,
kosta> if at all possible. It's like using uuencode/uudecode.

What about defining an in-band, very obvious, "magic string", sort of
cookie, that says to a MUA (or to *any* file manipulation program), that
'hey this is a MIME thingie'? Then cookie aware MUAs can apply metamail
or whatever MIMEry automagically, even if it is impossible to tag the
message envelope appropriately or even if there is no envelope.

As long as the cookie is *standard*, and damn unlikely to occur as part
of "normal" text.

There ought to be an option within the MUA/file viewer with three
values:

  CHECK:	ask every time if the file should be MIMEd.
  ALWAYS:	MIME the file every time there is a MIME cookie.
  NEVER:	don't MIME the file even if there is a MIME cookie.

kosta> What's your problem changing header lines? Maybe we can help you
kosta> to do this somehow.

Often this is not an option. Some mail systems have fixed headers.
--
Piercarlo Grandi, Dept of CS, PC/UW@Aberystwyth <pcg@aber.ac.uk>
  E l'italiano cantava, cantava. E le sue disperate invocazioni giunsero
  alle orecchie del suo divino protettore, il dio della barzelletta
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
From: ned@hmcvax.claremont.edu
Subject: Re: Commercial MIME products
Organization: Harvey Mudd College
Date: 9 Jan 93 03:10:34 PST

In article <syscrc.726294707@gsusgi1.gsu.edu>, syscrc@pickle.gsu.edu (Randy Carpenter) writes:
> Are there any?

The (commercial) PMDF product line supports MIME; it has done so since shortly
after RFC1341 came out. (Actually, PMDF had preliminary MIME support two years
ago; recent releases have simply brought this support into compliance with the
current specification.)

PMDF is a general purpose messaging package for VMS systems. PMDF-FAX and
PMDF-MR are optional components providing FAX and DEC MAILbus connectivity.

You can get further information on PMDF from sales@innosoft.com.

				Ned
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime