[ale] Decodeing base64/html email

Björn Gustafsson bg-ale at bjorng.net
Fri Jun 4 12:29:45 EDT 2010


Either alpine or pine do a semi-decent job of decoding MIME HTML
content in messages.  Google indicates[0] that mutt can do it as well,
but I don't have experience with that.

If you want to see tables and the like in your terminal, you'll have
to use lynx or something similar as a filter/display mechanism.
Again, any of the above mail clients will let you do that.

You could also do a simple pseudo-pipeline with the raw message:

mimedecode raw_message_file > message.html ;
lynx -dump message.html > message.txt

--Björn

[0]  http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/75

On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Ken Cochran <kwc at theworld.com> wrote:
> Hey again...  Some places/emailers send their messages in what
> appears to me to be a completely base64-encoded message body
> (example: newegg invoices).  Not only that, but it looks like
> what's inside (if I can manage to decode it) is html-only.  :(
>
> This seems to work if your mail client is pop3/imap but
> how about something on the command-line?  (e.g. mail/mailx,
> pine, mutt)
>
> If what's inside is text, then mutt handles that ok, but how
> do I extract it if it's html?  So far, a workaround is to use
> mutt to "bounce" the message to gmail but I'd really like some
> kind of command-line way to do it.  Ideas?
>
> Naturally, faq/doc/link pointers most welcome.  Thanks, -kc



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