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From: jhc@mtune.UUCP (Jonathan Clark)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: "Binary"/international text in mail
Message-ID: <761@mtune.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-Oct-86 00:16:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: mtune.761
Posted: Fri Oct 24 00:16:54 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Oct-86 05:13:49 EDT
References: <1185@hoptoad.uucp> <3000002@cdp> <755@mtune.UUCP> <7242@utzoo.UUCP> <1209@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: jhc@mtune.UUCP (Jonathan Clark)
Followup-To: net.mail
Organization: AT&T ISL Middletown NJ USA
Lines: 41

In article <1209@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.UUCP writes:
>In article <755@mtune.UUCP>, jhc@mtune.UUCP (Jonathan Clark) writes:
>> >How can you send binaries in mail?
>> You could if /bin/mail supported a logical separation between a letter
>> and its envelope....                            do any other mail
>> subsystems support this separation so that binaries could be mailed?
>
>Yes, the Arpanet mail standard (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, or SMTP,
>described in RFC [Request for Comments] #821) separates the text and
>the header information.  It specifically allows any of the 128 possible
>7-bit characters to be sent, and does a trivial encoding to allow the
>"end of text" marker to appear in messages.  It requires that 7-bit USASCII
>be used, however, which makes things hard on people in Europe and Asia.

I would claim that 7-bit ASCII isn't binary... but I would believe
that the separation of address and data works, at least for this
case. Extending the encoding mechanism would of course be easy, but
non-standard.

I'm told that X.400 separates its address and data as well.
Also that ATTMAIL provides some sort of mailing of binaries, although I
haven't been able to find out the mechanism yet (and I work there!).

>In article <7242@utzoo.UUCP>, henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>> > What happens if the string "\nFrom" appears in te binary?
>Actually, the mail transport system should not care about "From "s in things.

Aye, there's the rub. You're right that it shouldn't, but too many (ie
some) do. Bummer. Perhaps we should all convert. To something.
Speaking of X.400 doesn't that use some magic internal format which
means that you really need either conversion programs in and out or a
complete new subsystem, including editors and such? I ask this having
skimmed the X.400 specs some years ago, and having had a couple of
discussions about them. Constructive comments which display my
ignorance are welcome.

-- 
Jonathan Clark
[NAC,attmail]!mtune!jhc

My walk has become rather more silly lately.