Send compressed postscript as attachment?

Send compressed postscript as attachment?

[Kai Großjohann]

Suppose I want to send a postscript file in compressed form as a MIME
attachment, how would I go about this?

Right now, I "gzip foo.ps", then make an attachment using `C-c C-a'
and specifying foo.ps.gz as file name.  But this suggests
application/octet-stream as content-type.

How do I do this such that the recipient can click on it without
having to save it to disk first?

tia,
kai
-- 
~~/.signature

Re: Send compressed postscript as attachment?

[Matthias Wiehl]

Kai Großjohann <Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE> writes:

> Right now, I "gzip foo.ps", then make an attachment using `C-c C-a'
> and specifying foo.ps.gz as file name.  But this suggests
> application/octet-stream as content-type.
> 
> How do I do this such that the recipient can click on it without
> having to save it to disk first?

A note in the file /etc/mime.types on my Debian installation states
that compression schemes like gzip were not actually mime-types, so
the mime-type of an encoded file "refers to the type of data that has
been encoded, not the type of the encoding".

Thus, I'd suggest specifying "application/postscript" as
content-type for your file.

Does this help?

Re: Send compressed postscript as attachment?

[Jorge Godoy]

On 09 Jan 2001, Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE wrote:
> Suppose I want to send a postscript file in compressed form as a
> MIME attachment, how would I go about this?
> 
> Right now, I "gzip foo.ps", then make an attachment using `C-c C-a'
> and specifying foo.ps.gz as file name.  But this suggests
> application/octet-stream as content-type.
> 
> How do I do this such that the recipient can click on it without
> having to save it to disk first?

If the recipient uses Gnus he can choose the interactive view and use
gv as viewer, he'll have no trouble.

I don't know the MIME type you have to choose... :-( Maybe it's
application/post-script (which is the correct MIME for PostScript
files) but I'm in doubt because of the gzipped form of it. 


See you,
-- 
Godoy. <godoy@conectiva.com>

Departamento de Publicações       Conectiva S.A.
Publishing Department             Conectiva Inc.

Re: Send compressed postscript as attachment?

[Kai Großjohann]

On 09 Jan 2001, Matthias Wiehl wrote:

> Thus, I'd suggest specifying "application/postscript" as
> content-type for your file.

But that doesn't generate any additional MIME header that says that
the stuff is gzip compressed.  I think that something should be
there.  It's not Content-Transfer-Encoding, but some other header.
Sadly, I forget which one it is.

I sent myself a compressed postscript file, then ran `file %s |
xmessage -file -' as a viewer on it (using the `v' command on the MIME
part button), and, sure enough, it reported `gzip compressed data'.

Not useful.

If you try this yourself, don't use gv to check, because gv can
display *.ps.gz files directly.

kai
-- 
~/.signature

Re: Send compressed postscript as attachment?

[Kai Großjohann]

On 09 Jan 2001, Jorge Godoy wrote:

> If the recipient uses Gnus he can choose the interactive view and
> use gv as viewer, he'll have no trouble.

But I want to do it right!  I don't want to send a message which
sometimes works for some people, if the moon is full.  I want
something which should always work.

I vaguely remember something about it being possible to specify
compression for some stuff, but maybe it's a figment of my mind?
Maybe I should send PDF instead, as that offers built-in
compression... 

kai
-- 
~/.signature

Re: Send compressed postscript as attachment?

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann):

> On 09 Jan 2001, Matthias Wiehl wrote:
>> Thus, I'd suggest specifying "application/postscript" as
>> content-type for your file.

> But that doesn't generate any additional MIME header that says that
> the stuff is gzip compressed.  I think that something should be
> there.  It's not Content-Transfer-Encoding, but some other header.
> Sadly, I forget which one it is.

HTTP defines the header "content-coding", which may have a value of
"zip" or "x-gzip":
	<http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec3.html#sec3.5>

But I don't know if this header has been included into MIME proper,
or if it's used by any mail programs.

Re: Send compressed postscript as attachment?

[ShengHuo ZHU]

Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:

> >>>>> Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann):
> 
> > On 09 Jan 2001, Matthias Wiehl wrote:
> >> Thus, I'd suggest specifying "application/postscript" as
> >> content-type for your file.
> 
> > But that doesn't generate any additional MIME header that says that
> > the stuff is gzip compressed.  I think that something should be
> > there.  It's not Content-Transfer-Encoding, but some other header.
> > Sadly, I forget which one it is.
> 
> HTTP defines the header "content-coding", which may have a value of
> "zip" or "x-gzip":
> 	<http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec3.html#sec3.5>
> 
> But I don't know if this header has been included into MIME proper,
> or if it's used by any mail programs.

I guess not.

,----[RFC2557]
| Other sources of problems are Content-Encoding used in HTTP but not
| allowed in MIME, and character sets that are not able to represent
| line breaks as CRLF. A good overview of the differences between HTTP
| and MIME with regards to Content-Type: "text" can be found in [HTTP],
| appendix C.
`----

ShengHuo