On Sun, 19 Aug 2001 06:22:36 -0500, Neil T. wrote: > Greetings all- > I am in a situation where two of us are using the PC. I prefer using > Arachne for browsing and mail and Joanie uses W98. The problem is when > the mail comes through and there are messages for Joan, I forward them > on so when she logs on and fetches her mail, its there and waiting. > Most of the stuff comes through fine, but there have been a few messages > that I have forwarded, that when opened with w98 are random letters. > I notice now that this message form that I am using has the > mime box checked. A message received yesterday that open'd OK but when > I forwarded it and Joan opened, some of the text was garbled and there > was mention on the message about Mime format. > What is mime and is there a way to unscramble the text? (yes, she should > either use Arachne or get her own email set up!) > Cheers > Neil T. Neil: If your wife were using a well designed Windows email client (an oxymoron, of course), it would decode the MIME attachments automagically like Arachne does. MIME is an acronym. I forgot what it stands for. It refers to the base 64 encoding standard, which is currently the most popular standard for the PC platform. If your wife's email client cannot automagically decode a MIME attachment she will have to use a utility designed for this purpose. You can download from the net several freeware DOS utilities that will do this. Look for programs having manes such as MIME64.EXE or BASE64.EXE. Also there are others. If the MIME attachments received by your wife's email client cannot be decoded, then I would suspect that there is something really wrong with her email client. Nobody I know who uses Windows ever has any problems in decoding MIME attachments sent by Arachne or by any other DOS email client I have used. I have used many. I assure you that your wife's problem cannot be blamed on Arachne nor can it be blamed on DOS. Sam Heywood
