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Date:Mon Dec 15 02:39:58 1999 
Subject:Re: Funny Mail Files. 
From:Aaron Sloman See text for reply address 
Volume-ID:991215.01 

[To reply replace "Aaron.Sloman.XX" with "A.Sloman"]

pop@roo.cs.umass.edu (Robin Popplestone) writes:

> Date: 14 Dec 1999 22:03:33 GMT
> There's been something of a proliferation of funny mail formats. Does
> anybody have code for reading these things in Poplog?

I have various ad-hoc but useful modifications to a whole bunch of
Ved utilities for reading mail files, replying to them, extracting
and decoding mime attachments, handling a variety of email address
formats (e.g. Robin Popplestone <pop@cs.umass.edu> ), allowing
the To:, Cc: and Bcc: lists to extend over several lines (provided
that extended lines start with a tab or four spaces), etc.

One corollary is that you can no longer use space as a delimiter
between email addresses: you must use commas, or put the different
addresses on separate lines, e.g.

To: Robin Popplestone <pop@cs.umass.edu>,aaaronsl@cog.sussex.ac.uk
    another.person@place.domain (Prof Another Person)
    <mr.bracket@silly.com>,<mrs.bracket@silly.com>,
    ms.bracket@silly.com
Subject: testing addresses, etc.

The Cc: and Bcc: lists can have the same format as the To: list.

Another corrolary is that if you have a Cc: list at the end of your
header, the message body must NOT start with an indented line,
unless there is a blank line first.

The ENTER reply, Reply, respond, Respond commands have all been
extended to deal with new email address formats.

(Maybe someone will one day merge these fixes with vmail?)

The ENTER getmail command is more useful that the old "ENTER mail"
because instead of putting everything in one big file, it attempts
to create files called mail1, mail2, mail3, mail4  etc. in a mail
directory that you specify, though you can specify how big a mail
file should be before it starts a new one, so that you don't
necessarily create a new mail file every time you read in new mail.


For extracting and decoding attachments see auto/ved_decode.p amd
help/decode in the tar file. I have not read the MIME specification
so that is not guaranteed to work for everything: I merely gradually
extended it empirically to cope with the various kinds of
attachments that turned up in my mail files. It is quite flexible
and easy to extend for new file types, etc.


All my stuff is available in this 84 KByte tar package:
    ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/dist/poplog/vedmail.tar.gz
or
    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/vedmail.tar.gz

After fetching it un-tar it into $poplocal/local to make everything
automatically available.

Contents:

-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70      569 Oct 18 00:28 1998 auto/getmail.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/70     1667 Oct  4 14:37 1997 auto/lastmail.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70      391 Sep 30 21:26 1998 auto/popsitename.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     1267 Apr  3 15:16 1997 auto/sysgetmailname.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70      329 Apr 19 10:57 1992 auto/ved_Respond.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     3300 Jul 11 12:46 1999 auto/ved_alias.p
    For extracting aliases from your .mailrc to insert in mail
    messages in Ved.
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     1274 May 14 18:31 1995 auto/ved_ccm.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90      923 Dec 15 02:01 1999 auto/ved_cleanmail.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     6076 Apr  7 11:38 1996 auto/ved_checkmail.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90    16482 Dec 15 00:32 1999 auto/ved_decode.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/70     4171 Dec 21 17:40 1996 auto/ved_getit.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90     6670 Nov 28 11:11 1998 auto/ved_getmail.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     2630 May 18 18:07 1995 auto/ved_gm.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90     6047 Jan 30 19:59 1999 auto/ved_grep.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90     4701 Nov 10 23:15 1999 auto/ved_grepmail.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/70     1667 Oct  4 14:37 1997 auto/ved_lastmail.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     1459 Nov 13 00:27 1995 auto/ved_lm.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     2895 Nov 13 01:10 1995 auto/ved_mcm.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/70     5127 Jan 15 22:23 1997 auto/ved_mdir.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/70     2084 Oct 18 19:42 1996 auto/ved_mergemail.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90      822 Dec 15 02:04 1999 auto/ved_mmi.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70      885 Oct 21 16:09 1994 auto/ved_mmo.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     2155 May 14 16:57 1995 auto/ved_nextmail.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70        0 Nov 13 00:27 1995 auto/ved_nm.p linked to auto/ved_lm.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70        0 May 14 16:57 1995 auto/ved_prevmail.p linked to auto/ved_nextmail.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     1137 Sep 27 00:39 1992 auto/ved_purgefiles.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70      607 Oct  8 16:33 1994 auto/ved_purgemail.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90    12964 Jul 23 02:15 1999 auto/ved_reply.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     1725 Oct 21 20:42 1994 auto/ved_respond.p
    For sending replies composed by editing an indented version of
    the original.
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90      630 Jan 23 11:10 1999 auto/ved_rrr.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     1396 Sep 22 12:36 1996 auto/ved_seen.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90    31114 Jul 11 10:18 1999 auto/ved_send.p
            New version of ved_send, coping with extra formats
-rw-r--r-- 1807/70     5268 Aug 31 18:16 1997 auto/ved_tah.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90     5437 Dec 15 00:24 1999 auto/ved_tmh.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/70      406 Jan 15 22:41 1997 auto/ved_vm.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     1986 Nov 26 11:41 1995 auto/ved_wappcm.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     2054 Jul  9 11:12 1999 auto/vedatmailstart.p
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70      966 Oct 15 20:52 1993 auto/vedskipheaders.p
-rw-r--r-- 1807/70    45866 Nov  7 01:12 1999 help/INSTALL.TXT
    (General copyright notice, etc. from the poplog site)
-rw-r--r-- 1807/70     4594 Jan 13 01:30 1997 help/mail
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     4802 Nov  5 17:27 1993 help/mailrc
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     1538 Oct  8 17:05 1994 help/ved_alias
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90     8390 Dec 15 01:02 1999 help/ved_decode
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     3793 Oct 14 20:51 1995 help/ved_getit
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90    26856 Oct 18 02:17 1998 help/ved_getmail
-rw-rw-r-- 1807/70     6684 Oct 14 20:30 1995 help/ved_grep
-rw-r--r-- 1807/70      768 Jan 13 01:09 1997 help/ved_mail
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90     3278 Dec 15 00:26 1999 help/ved_tmh
-rw-r--r-- 1807/90    27230 Oct  2 05:34 1999 teach/email


Improvements always welcoem.

Aaron
===
-- 
Aaron Sloman, ( http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/ )
School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK
EMAIL A.Sloman AT cs.bham.ac.uk   (NB: Anti Spam address)
PAPERS: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/