Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ogicse!milton!Tomobiki-Cho!mrc
From: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT multi-media message file format
Message-ID: <8242@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 28 Sep 90 02:33:56 GMT
References: <1990Sep27.212624.6406@sti.fi>
Sender: news@milton.u.washington.edu
Organization: Mendou Zaibatsu, Tomobiki-Cho, Butsumetsu-Shi
Lines: 49

In article <1990Sep27.212624.6406@sti.fi> ttl@sti.fi (Timo Lehtinen) writes:
>I'd like to get some information on the file format of the NeXT multimedia 
>messages. For example do they conform to RFC822 at all? How is bodypart 
>encapsulation done? 

The problem with the NeXT multimedia mail format is that it is only
used on NeXT computers.  It does not exist on any other platform.
What's more, my attempts to get a specification of the NeXT multimedia
mail format were rebuffed; apparently NeXT considers it proprietary.

Since open standards are the name of the game in this day and age, I
decided not to reverse-engineer the NeXT format and instead to use an
existing standard for multi-part, multi-structured messages in the
RFC-822 mail world; to wit, RFC-1154.  RFC-1154 specifies a new
"Encoding:" header field.  RFC-1154 is the format which is expected to
be used by other TCP/IP applications for multi-structured mail,
including the Privacy-Enhanced Mail project.

NeXT Mail can only interoperate with other NeXTs running NeXT Mail,
whereas applications that use RFC-1154 will interoperate with a wide
variety of applications and platforms.

My project is a distributed electronic mail system using the IMAP2
protocol of RFC-1176.  I have been distributing IMAP2 client and
server software on a variety of platforms, including the NeXT, for a
couple of years now.  You can get the current distribution version
(July 27) from FTPHOST.CAC.WASHINGTON.EDU, as file imap/imap.tar.Z and
the other files on the imap/ directory.  A new release of my
mailsystem with support for multi-structured mail will be available
sometime in December.

The thrust of my current work in multimedia mail is to support
attachments, e.g. the ability to mail spreadsheets and similar binary
files in a seamless manner.  I consider this to be more important than
mailing voice or pictures, although I am not precluding this.  For
voice communications, a pair of NeXTs and the Internet is a poor and
uneconomical substitute for the telephone and VoiceMail.  I can check
my VoiceMail messages from anyplace there's a phone; I can't do that
with NeXT Mail voice.  As for pictures, I believe that network FAX is
going to become the wave of the future; this would probably be the
functionality that I implement.

 _____   | ____ ___|___   /__ Mark ("Gaijin") Crispin  "Gaijin! Gaijin!"
 _|_|_  -|- ||   __|__   /  / R90/6 pilot, DoD #0105   "Gaijin ha doko?"
|_|_|_|  |\-++-  |===|  /  /  Atheist & Proud          "Niichan ha gaijin."
 --|--  /| ||||  |___|    /\  (206) 842-2385/543-5762  "Chigau.  Gaijin ja nai.
  /|\    | |/\| _______  /  \ MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU    Omae ha gaijin darou"
 / | \   | |__|  /   \  /    \"Iie, boku ha nihonjin." "Souka. Yappari gaijin!"
Hee, dakedo UNIX nanka wo tsukatte, umaku ikanaku temo shiranai yo.