[afnog] Mail Server Problem

[Brian Candler]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2004 at 06:57:34PM -0000, Mensah Agbessitse wrote:
> [-- Attachment #2: winmail.dat --]
> [-- Type: application/ms-tnef, Encoding: base64, Size: 3.2M --]

Ugh. You are making a lot of work for people on the list by using
Microsoft-proprietry formats for attaching files instead of MIME. Ok, here
goes:

# cd /usr/ports/converters/tnef
# make all install clean

-rw-------  1 lists  lists  2489837 Oct 28 08:20 winmail.dat
using tnef, winmail.dat has now become
-rw-r--r--  1 lists  lists  1000464 Oct 28 08:22 Untitled Attachment

$ file Untitled\ Attachment 
Untitled Attachment: data
$ strings Untitled\ Attachment | head
Microsoft Visio Drawing
VISIO 6.0 Shapes
Visio.Drawing.6
 EMF
EMF+
EMF+0@
EMF+
Bw7CC
,CJr
Bw7CC

Nope, sorry, having gone to all the trouble of removing a MS-proprietry
attachment wrapper, I am now left with a MS-proprietry drawing format, which
is no use to me whatsoever. Even OpenOffice can't handle it.

Please use a cross-platform format: that is, convert it to a PDF or a JPEG,
and attach that (using a MIME attachment, not ms-tnef)

As a bonus side-effect, such files are likely to be much, much smaller than
the file you attached.

Thanks,

Brian.