MAILCAP

MAILCAP

NAME DESCRIPTION BUILT-IN CONTENT-TYPE SUPPORT FILES SEE ALSO COPYRIGHT AUTHOR

NAME

mailcap - metamail capabilities file

DESCRIPTION

The mailcap file is read by the metamail program to determine how to display non-text at the local site.

The syntax of a mailcap file is quite simple, at least compared to termcap files. Any line that starts with

Each individual mailcap entry consists of a content-type specification, a command to execute, and (possibly) a set of optional

text/plain; cat %s

The optional flags can be used to specify additional information about the mail-handling command. For example:

text/plain; cat %s; copiousoutput

can be used to indicate that the output of the 'cat' command may be voluminous, requiring either a scrolling window, a pager, or some other appropriate coping mechanism.

The

The

If no

Two special codes can appear in the viewing command for objects of type multipart (any subtype). These are

The

The

The

The

The

The

needsterminal

If this flag is given, the named interpreter needs to interact with the user on a terminal. In some environments (e.g. a window-oriented mail reader under X11) this will require the creation of a new terminal emulation window, while in most environments it will not. If the mailcap entry specifies

copiousoutput

This flag should be given whenever the interpreter is capable of producing more than a few lines of output on stdout, and does no interaction with the user. If the mailcap entry specifies copiousoutput, and pagination has been requested via the

BUILT-IN CONTENT-TYPE SUPPORT

The metamail program has built-in support for a few key content-types. In particular, it supports the text type, the multipart and multipart/alternative type, and the message/rfc822 types. This support is incomplete for many subtypes -- for example, it only supports US-ASCII text in general. This kind of built-in support can be OVERRIDDEN by an entry in any mailcap file on the user's search path. Metamail also has rudimentary built-in support for types that are totally unrecognized -- i.e. for which no mailcap entry or built-in handler exists. For such unrecognized types, metamail will write a file with a

FILES

$HOME/.mailcap:/etc/mailcap:/usr/share/etc/mailcap:/usr/local/etc/mailcap -- default path for mailcap files.

SEE ALSO

run-mailcap(1), mailcap.order__(5)?, update-mime__(8)?

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1991 Bell Communications Research, Inc. (Bellcore)

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this material for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies, and that the name of Bellcore not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to this material without the specific, prior written permission of an authorized representative of Bellcore. BELLCORE MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE ACCURACY OR SUITABILITY OF THIS MATERIAL FOR ANY PURPOSE. IT IS PROVIDED

AUTHOR

Nathaniel S. Borenstein