base64 (was: Re: airfoil GIFs)

[PPARKER@TWSUVM.UC.TWSU.EDU]

> Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 14:47:22 -0800 (PST)
> From: jmclean@chem.ucsd.edu (James Mclean)
>
> More communications problems.  My unix system doesn't seem to handle MIME
> attachments very well: it recognizes that they are there but cannot
> translate them.  So I tried to save the file and edit out the email parts
> so that I could use an image program.
>
> The difficulty: the attachments did have anywhere in them the sequence
> 'GIF87a' or 'GIF89a' which must be at the beginning of any GIF file.  I
> conclude that the attachments were not simply GIF format.  Do MIME
> attachments use some sort of compression?

MIME attachments of binaries, such as GIFs, are "base64" encoded. You
must use a decoder first to recover a standard GIF file. You may not
have a decoder (e.g., debase64) on your system, or it may be there but
not properly linked to your mail reader.
   "base64" is like UUencoding, except that it passes EBCDIC<->ASCII
conversion unscathed, thus is more suitable for Internet email,
especially internationally.

---------------------------------------------
Phil Parker        pparker@twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu
Random quote for this second:
  Weiler's Law: Nothing is impossible for the man who does not
  have to do it himself.