NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/comp/sys/next/misc/24013

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-23 | 7.3 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!portal!rtbrain!rightbrain.com
From: [e-mail] (Glenn Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
Subject: Re: Next-Attachment header
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Jan 93 00:15:02 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Lines: 199


This is a repost of an article posted by Avie Tevanian of NeXT a bit
over a year ago.  It details the NeXTmail format header, so you don't
have to guess.  It looks like it's formatted a bit weirdly in this post
window, but I'm too lazy to re-break the lines.

--
 Glenn Reid                NeXTmail: [e-mail]
 RightBrain Software        415-326-2974 (NeXTfax 326-2977)
 Palo Alto, California        Electronic Frontier Foundation, member #054


From: [e-mail] (Avadis Tevanian)
Subject: Re: NeXTMail and proprietary file formats (was: NeXTMail on a MAC)
Date: 21 Sep 91 03:32:12 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]

Our Mail program does not use a proprietary format.  I encourage you to write
mail programs for other platforms, or even other UI's for our software
environment that can send and receive this format.  To assist you, I am
including the specification of the format in this message.  Thanks go to
Kevin
Wells for writing this all up, we give it out to anyone that asks.  [Note
that
Kevin's version is full of fancy formatting options, but I won't post in RTF
to
reduce the potential flamage :-)].

NeXTmail Message Format

Copyright  1990 by NeXT Computer, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

The NeXT logo is a registered trademark of NeXT Computer, Inc. in the U.S.
and
other countries.   NeXT and NeXTmail are trademarks of NeXT Computer, Inc.
UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T.  All other trademarks mentioned
belong
to their respective owners.

NeXTmail Message Format

This document describes the NeXTmail  multimedia transmission format for
users
and developers who want to access and create NeXTmail messages on other UNIX
platforms, or build gateways between NeXTmail and other mail systems.  The
procedures described here rely on utility programs found in most standard
UNIX
implementations.  This specification applies to NeXT  software releases 1.0
and
2.0.

The NeXTmail system sends and receives both standard UNIX mail messages and
NeXTmail multimedia messages.  When sending a message, as soon as the user
attaches a document or formats the text with anything other than the default
font and paragraph formats, the message is converted to the NeXTmail
multimedia
format.  This change occurs at a specific time and is indicated by a change
in
the icon on the Deliver button in the send window.  Once this change occurs,
it
cannot be undone.  When receiving messages, NeXTmail automatically interprets
the multimedia format correctly.

Although the the NeXTmail multimedia format is straightforward and easily
specified, NeXT expects to change this format in the future, and thus has
chosen not to publish the specification.  The information in this document is
subject to change without notice and must be used with the full realization
that programs and procedures created based on this information will not
continue to work indefinitely.




Receiving NeXTmail Format Messages

When a NeXTmail multimedia message is received, it contains a normal RFC822
header with an additional  Next-Attachment  field, and a block of ASCII
encoded
hexadecimal digits surrounded by lines containing the words begin and end.
The
body of the message has been put in uuencoded format to convert binary data
to
ASCII for transmission, and compressed for efficiency.  To reconstruct the
message, three operations must be performed:  The message must be unencoded,
uncompressed, and broken down into its component files.

To reconstruct NeXTmail messages, perform the following steps:

1.    Save the text of the message in a file called mailfilename in its own
subdirectory.

2.    Run the command:

uudecode mailfilename

This operation produces a file called .tar.nnn.subject.attach where nnn is
some
unique number, and subject is the subject of the mail message with blanks
replaced by underscores.  (Note that uudecode automatically ignores the mail
header.)

3.    Run the command:

uncompress < .tar.nnn.subject.attach | tar xvf -

This operation uncompresses the message and breaks it up into its component
files.  At a minimum, there will be one file named index.rtf, which contains
the body of the message in Rich Text Format  (RTF).  (For information about
RTF
see the Rich Text Format specification available from Microsoft and published
in the Supplementary Documentation manual from the NeXT Developer's Library.)
In addition, if the message contains sound documents, pictures, or other
documents, these objects will appear in separate files.  For more information
on the UNIX commands specified here, see the relevant UNIX manual pages.




RTF Format

NeXT has extended the standard RTF file format to allow references to
documents
to be attached to NeXTmail messages.  Such references are of the form:

{\attachmentnnn attachmentname
}

where attachmentname is the file name of the attachment, and nnn is the
position of the attachment within the body of the mail message (specified as
the number of characters from the beginning of the file).  The attachment
reference can occur anywhere in the file, but multiple attachments must be
referenced in the order in which they appear in the message.

Following is an example of an RTF file with an embedded attachment reference:

{\rtf0\ansi{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss Helvetica;\f1\fmodern Ohlfs;\f2\fnil
Times-Roman;}
\margl120
\margr120
{{\attachment86 attachmentname
}
\pard\tx960\tx1920\tx2880\tx3840\tx4800\tx5760\tx6720\tx7680\tx8640\tx9600\f1
\f
s28 this is some rich text
\f0  this is some helvectica\
\
this is more helvetica\

\pard\tx960\tx1920\tx2880\tx3840\tx4800\tx5760\tx6720\tx7680\tx8640\tx9600\f0
\b
0\i0\ul0\fs28 \

\pard\f2\b\fs24 This is times bold
\f0\b0 .\
\
and another line of text\

}




Creating NeXTmail Format Messages

The procedure for creating NeXTmail messages on non-NeXT UNIX systems is the
inverse of the procedure for reconstructing NeXTmail messages.

Perform the following steps to create a NeXTmail message:

1.    Create the index.rtf file containing the message body and references
to
any attached files as described above.

2.    Put the index.rtf file and all of the files to be attached to the
message in a separate subdirectory.

3.    Run the command:

tar cvf - * | compress | uuencode .tar.nnn.subject.attach > ../subject.temp

where subject is the subject of the message with blanks replaced by
underscores, and nnn is an arbitrary integer.  This operation produces a file
called subject.temp, in the parent directory of the directory where the files
to be mailed reside.  (Note that this command must be entered as a single
line.)

4.    Mail this file in a message by itself, adding a header field of the
form:

Next-Attachment: .tar.nnn.subject.attach, bytes, 1/1, size, 0

where bytes is the length in bytes of the subject.temp file, and size is the
integer number of 48 byte blocks (counting the last partial block as a whole
block), multiplied by 66 characters per block.
--
Avadis Tevanian, Jr.    (Avie)
Director, System Software
NeXT, Inc.
[e-mail]