On 3/11/17, Mary Ann Horton <mah(a)mhorton.net> wrote: Is it possible to send multi-part email bodies using uuencode, as it is with MIME? -Paul W.

Hello! Jason, that is amazing. Can you e-mail me steps you took? But please do so off of list. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8(a)gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 1:28 AM, <jsteve(a)superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote: > As much as I despise the whole ???email server is my file server???, the thing > is that email clients are cross platform, and an easy way to get data in and > out of a server, and out to other people. SMTP+UUENCODE/MIME is basically > the best peer to peer network that is still going strong, since RFC 821 in > 1982! Naturally other email systems existed prior to this, but SMTP let you > easily send across the internet, in a method that basically still works to > this day, although servers have become more selective on who they talk to, > thanks to the rise of SPAM.. > > > > I just fired up 4.3 BSD Uwsic, and setup an external DNS, and right away I???m > able to send an email, and I???m able to receive it on gmail: > > > > From: The Not Ready for Prime Time Super User root(a)csl3.wisc.edu > > > > Compared to what a disaster FTP turned out with it???s active/passive port > games, SMTP with it???s relay based nature is still the easiest way to send & > receive data. Add in something like Microsoft Exhcange, which has > persistent and shared data stores, it???s quite easily to setup ???public > folders??? and keep binaries in there. Of course you???d be crazy to put > ancient email servers directly onto the internet, but you can easily setup > forwarding/spooling gateways like postfix, to process inbound mail, and > deliver it to your ancient UNIX/VMS/MacOS/Windows server of choice. I route > mine through MS Office 365, but backend on Exchange 5.5 as I can use the > Outlook client on MS-DOS, MacOS, and OS/2 to easily get files around if > needed. Add in stunnel, and you can even use ???modern??? IMAP clients against > Exchange 5.5... Not that I???d recommend you doing something like this... lol > > > > Sent from Mail for Windows 10 > > > > From: Dan Cross > Sent: Sunday, 12 March 2017 9:16 AM > To: Mary Ann Horton > Cc: TUHS main list > Subject: Re: [TUHS] attachments: MIME and uuencode > > > > On Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 6:05 PM, Mary Ann Horton <mah(a)mhorton.net> wrote: > > Possible? Yes. Convenient? No. > > You could cat several uuencode files together and send them in one email. > You'd have to edit them on the receiving end into separate files and > uudecode them separately. In practice, you'd uuencode a tarball. > > MIME was a major advance, and what's telling is that 25 years later, > SMTP/MIME is still the standard. > > > > This is so interesting. Not to be argumentative about it but I felt it was > actually something of a regression. Something like making a file available > via an FTP server (possible in an executable but unreadable directory with > an obscure name) or just in some directory in an organization where a > filesystem was shared and sending a pointer to the file via email seemed > much more efficient, particularly if one was sending to multiple recipients. > Attaching files to email as MIME components felt like trying to turn email > into a filesystem, and SMTP into a file transfer protocol. The way I saw it, > email was email and we already had file transfer protocols.... > > > > It seemed like MIME really took off when Microsoft embraced it; before that, > plain ol' text seemed much more common. My sense at the time was that > networked filesystems and services like FTP (or the then-nascent HTTP) were > far less commonplace on the MS platform, so email as a content distribution > mechanism was more natural in that world. I was somewhat dismayed at the > inability to make Windows users see the light; in retrospect, of course, > this just means that I myself was missing something critical. > > > > Mary Ann, why did you consider it such a step forward? I'm really curious > about the reasoning from folks involved with such things at the time. > > > > - Dan C. > > > >

On Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 6:05 PM, Mary Ann Horton &lt;mah(a)mhorton.net <mailto:mah@mhorton.net>> wrote: Possible? Yes. Convenient? No. You could cat several uuencode files together and send them in one email. You'd have to edit them on the receiving end into separate files and uudecode them separately. In practice, you'd uuencode a tarball. MIME was a major advance, and what's telling is that 25 years later, SMTP/MIME is still the standard. This is so interesting. Not to be argumentative about it but I felt it was actually something of a regression. Something like making a file available via an FTP server (possible in an executable but unreadable directory with an obscure name) or just in some directory in an organization where a filesystem was shared and sending a pointer to the file via email seemed much more efficient, particularly if one was sending to multiple recipients. Attaching files to email as MIME components felt like trying to turn email into a filesystem, and SMTP into a file transfer protocol. The way I saw it, email was email and we already had file transfer protocols.... It seemed like MIME really took off when Microsoft embraced it; before that, plain ol' text seemed much more common. My sense at the time was that networked filesystems and services like FTP (or the then-nascent HTTP) were far less commonplace on the MS platform, so email as a content distribution mechanism was more natural in that world. I was somewhat dismayed at the inability to make Windows users see the light; in retrospect, of course, this just means that I myself was missing something critical. Mary Ann, why did you consider it such a step forward? I'm really curious about the reasoning from folks involved with such things at the time. - Dan C.

I think it might actually predates 6/1/80 by 6-9 months because I was at Tek a year earlier and you and I started corresponding that first summer I was at Tek. I remember that you had sent me a copy of it shortly after you wrote it. So I think there is a chance that that might be a slightly later version. Clem On Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 2:07 PM, Mary Ann Horton &lt;mah(a)mhorton.net <mailto:mah@mhorton.net>> wrote: I just heard from a historian named Piotr Klaban with an interesting historical sidelight. Apparently today 3/11/17 is being publicized as the 25th anniversary of the email attachment, citing Nat Borenstein's MIME. Piotr points out that uuencode predates MIME, and he's right. I checked and, while I don't have any email archives from that time frame at Berkeley, I was able to find the 4BSD archive on minnie that dates the uuencode.1c man page at 6/1/80. We didn't call them attachments back then, just sending binary files by email. (Prior to then it was common to just include the text of the file raw in the email, which only worked for ASCII files.) It was a few years later when cc:Mail and Microsoft Mail started calling uuencoded files embedded in email "attachments". When MIME came out in 1992 I became a champion of SMTP/MIME as a standard - it was a big improvement. But uuencod predated MIME by 12 years. Mary Ann

That's interesting, Clem. It would be useful to date the real date of the first email attachment sent. Right now the only firm date we have is 6/1/80. Do you have any old email or copy of uuencode that could establish an earlier date?