Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ANDREW.CMU.EDU!nsb+
From: nsb+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Nathaniel Borenstein)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: SMTP and alternate message body types [Was Re: Secure SMTP & X.400]
Message-ID: <8YGYnky00Uk48BPX9=@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 17 Apr 89 20:45:36 GMT
References: <12747@jade.BBN.COM>
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> *Excerpts from magazines.mail.cfe: 6-Apr-89 SMTP and alternate message ..*
> *Matt Landau@bbn.com (2843)*
> I believe that CMU has done something similar with the Andrew system
> to allow delivery of Andrew multimedia documents via sendmail.  I'm not
> sure their version is configurable to handle arbitrary content types,
> but the existence of these two different systems should serve as proof
> that we can easily extend current SMTP (and other text-mail mail delivery
> mechanisms) to deal with complex body types, without all the ancilliary
> hair of X.400
Yes, this is certainly the case.  For the record, the Andrew Message system can
handle other content types; for example, you can use the header

Content-type: troff; 0 ; /usr/lib/tmac/tmac.an,/usr/lib/tmac/tmac.recipe

to see on-screen the properly formatted versions of the recipes that Briane Reid
distributes via the newsgroup alt.gourmand (assuming, of course, that you've
installed his troff library in /usr/lib/tmac/tmac.recipe).  The mechanism is
indeed very general and flexible.