Will@cup.portal.com (Will E Estes) (03/26/91)
Have there been any attempts to define a standard for the transmission
of multiple binary files inside of an RFC-822 envelope? Is there
anything about RFC-822 that makes this impossible? It seems to me that
this capability is going to become very important to companies who
want to make use of cheap TCP/IP internets and SMTP as the backbone
for their email networks.
Thanks,
Will Estes Internet: Will@cup.portal.com
UUCP: apple!cup.portal.com!Willphilf@xymox.metaphor.com (Phil Fernandez) (03/28/91)
In article <40567@cup.portal.com> Will@cup.portal.com (Will E Estes) writes: >Have there been any attempts to define a standard for the transmission >of multiple binary files inside of an RFC-822 envelope? Is there >anything about RFC-822 that makes this impossible? It seems to me that >this capability is going to become very important to companies who >want to make use of cheap TCP/IP internets and SMTP as the backbone >for their email networks. At Metaphor we have done a fair amount of thought-work on this issue, and have built an effective working prototype for the transmission of multiple binary attachments in an RFC-822 message transmitted via SMTP. I'd be very interested in discussing approaches and possible standardization with others. pmf -- Phil Fernandez | philf@metaphor.com Director, System Software | ...!{apple|decwrl}!metaphor!philf Development | Metaphor Computer Systems | "Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind Mountain View, CA | rule the body? I dunno..." - Morrissey
rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) (03/30/91)
There is an IETF working group for SMTP extensions that will probably be addressing at least some of these areas... To be added to the list, send to ietf-smtp-request@dimacs.rutgers.edu -- Please send comp.sources.unix-related mail to rsalz@uunet.uu.net. Use a domain-based address or give alternate paths, or you may lose out.
swilliam@a101.even.ge.com (U-E99999-Stephen Williams) (04/02/91)
philf@xymox.metaphor.com (Phil Fernandez) writes: >In article <40567@cup.portal.com> Will@cup.portal.com (Will E Estes) writes: >>Have there been any attempts to define a standard for the transmission >>of multiple binary files inside of an RFC-822 envelope? Is there >>anything about RFC-822 that makes this impossible? It seems to me that >>this capability is going to become very important to companies who >>want to make use of cheap TCP/IP internets and SMTP as the backbone >>for their email networks. >At Metaphor we have done a fair amount of thought-work on this issue, >and have built an effective working prototype for the transmission of >multiple binary attachments in an RFC-822 message transmitted via >SMTP. >I'd be very interested in discussing approaches and possible >standardization with others. We have been looking at Poste as a standard email package. It has a nice Motif User Interface and supports many standards, including X.400 and SMTP/sendmail. It has a configurable enclosures capability and can send messages with enclosures to sendmail addresses. It just encodes the pieces in uuencode if neccessary and adds a line like: Encoding: 24 text, 16 uuencode gif, 3000 uuencode bitmap denoting the pieces. Looks great to me! The absence of an X- prefix would indicate that they expect this to be standard or that they don't know any better. Does anyone know if this feature has reached RFC status yet? sdw -- -- Stephen D. Williams SDW Systems (513) 439-5428 GE AEG (513) 552-5237 ICBM: 39 34N 85 15W Internet: swilliam@a101.even.ge.com sdwsys!sdw@valhalla.cs.wright.edu