[Info-vax] SFF and MIME

[JF Mezei]

Tom wrote:
>             I am wanting to send SMTP mail from OpenVMS V7.3-2 using
> TCP/IP Services V5.4. Up front I must say that I want to be able to
> send a Subject line, a text Message Body AS WELL AS an HTML file
> attachment.

The minute you have an attachement, then all bodyparts, even a text one
become an attachement. So you need to attach the plain text part, and
then attach the HTML portion.  You can attache non-0attachement plain
text before the first attachement, but it will be displayed only by user
agents who do not understand attachements.



> 1.	If I use MAIL to send the MIME created file it sends through the
> attachment correctly.
> $ MAIL /SUBJECT="Test email"/PERSONAL_NAME="System_Messaging"
> CPSPDR:TOM.MIME @esrc:tom.recip

Except for most recent release of VMS, the above will work only when the
destination does no go through the STMP% foreign delivery. SMTP% would
always insert a blank line between the header it generated, and the
content, this rendering all of the MIME stuff just plain text gobbledeegook.

SFF is the only safe way to send mime emails on current versions of VMS.
(consider that the VAX version will never work properly for instance).
MAIL may work depending on what version of everything you have.



> MAIL FROM:<mcwilliamt at aforbes.co.za>
> RCPT TO:<mcwilliamt at aforbes.co.za>
> DATA
> Date: Sun, 4 Aug 1996 14:48:14 -0400
> Message-Id: <96080414481500 at compaq.com>
> From: mcwilliamt at aforbes.co.za (Alexander Forbes)
> To: mcwilliamt at aforbes.co.za
> Subject: Test of SFF
> mechanism
> 
> Dearly beloved we are gathered here today....
> Blah, Blah, fish paste, stick and throttle....


This header does not have the required

MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
	boundary="----_=_NextPart_001_01CA79B2.D9340F18"

In order to cause the user agent to parse the message contenst as a
series of attachements.