[ale] metamail?

[Mark J. Reed]

Jim Philips <rebus at rebus.mindspring.com> writes:
\ Metamail is part of the Andrew User Environment from Carnegie-Mellon. It
\ works a lot like .mailcap and tells your mail reader what program to
\ start when it finds an attachment. Andrew has been around for awhile,
\ but it is a pretty complete system, including a messaging system, a word
\ processor, a programming environment, a mail filtering system and, of
\ course, metamail. This message was sent with the Andrew Messaging
\ system. 

A couple points.

1.  Metamail isn't part of the Andrew User Environment.  Although
    Andrew may use Metamail, the latter is an independent entity.

2. .mailcap isn't a program or a system, but a file that instructs many
   different programs how to treat different types of MIME documents.  
   Metamail reads the .mailcap file to determine how to handle
   each type, as do Netscape, SecureMail, etc.  Metamail doesn't
   replace the .mailcap; it uses it.

3. Metamail doesn't tell your mailer how to do anything.  MIME mailers
   just read the .mailcap directly and have no need for Metamail.  Some
   non-MIME mailers, notably ELM, invoke metamail to handle MIME
   messages, in which case metamail just handles the displaying/saving
   of the message directly.  There's no communication back to the
   mailer.


-Mark





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Mark J. Reed
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--
Mark J. Reed
Email: mark_reed at sware.com - Voice: +1 404 315 6296 x158 - Fax: +1 404 315 6407
Hewlett-Packard Co. / 2957 Clairmont Rd Suite 220 / Atlanta GA 30329-1647
E-Mail Privacy by SecureMail.  Visit URL:http://www.secureware.com/ for details.