mailcap: matching MIME messages with helpers

This document describes mailcap file as used specifically by Metcast. See a brief mailcap reference and [RFC1524] for more details. See MIME helpers - decoders for weather content messages for more details on Metcast-specific helpers.

The Metcast client, retriever, implements almost completely the mailcap functionality as required by the normative documents mentioned above. Thus the retriever can serve as a MIME-compliant user-agent, similar to metamail.

The only features of mailcap not implemented in the current version of the retriever are test=, notes=, etc. flags of mailcap entries. They are silently disregarded.

Examples of mailcap files

UNIX platform

image/x-sowlp-gray; /home/www/pictures/view_sowlp %s

text/x-packed-dat ; echo %{area} \;cp %s packed.dat ; copiousoutput
text/x-syn ;        echo %{area} \; cp %s rto.syn
text/* ;        echo \"can't handle %t\"
application/x-move-to; test -d %{AREA} || mkdir %{AREA}\; cp %s %{AREA}/%{name}
image/x-portable-graymap; ./sat-proc %s %{area} %{KIND} \
        \"%{description}\" %{timestamp}
*/* ;   echo \"can't handle %t\"
Note that in this example, data of text/x-packed-dat and text/x-syn types are merely saved into corresponding files (packed.dat and rto.syn resp). See below for more advanced processing, using JMV and METAR helpers.

WinNT/Win95 platform

text/x-packed-dat ; ncspdw %s
text/x-syn ;        syn-proc %{area} %s
image/x-portable-graymap; sat-proc %s %{area} %{KIND} \
        \"%{description}\" %{timestamp}
*/* ;   echo \"can't handle %t\"

History

$Id: Mailcaps.html,v 1.1 1997/09/10 19:34:39 oleg Exp oleg $