Re: E-mail Recipients receive two attachments

From: Bill Weylock (bill_at_nospam.net)
Date: 06/01/04 

Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 14:08:56 -0700

Paul -

Thinking back I remember that I used to take pains to save graphics files
without a resource fork (or ³for web² use in some preferences). But itıs
been a long time since I have even thought to worry about that.

Jpegs, gifs, pdfs, word docs, excel spread sheets, powerpoint files fly out
of here all the time, and problems at the other end are very rare. I also
send copies to myself so that I can grab them off the server with Outlook or
Eudora on my PC, and they always come through just fine. I just sent myself
a pdf to test this, and it opened beautifully in Outlook with no extras. I
guess older email software, as you say, is what causes the problem. I guess
Iım spoiled.

Of course it is such a habit now that I forget that I used to have problems
before I learned to add extensions. I honestly thought that such issues were
well in the past. Iım OS X spoiled now and have ³hide extensions² turned on
for most apps, so I forgot. Saving files, I do go out of my way to make sure
they have extensions, but itıs second nature.

Where I DO have a consistent problem is when I copy folders or groups of
files from the Mac over to the PC. Then I get an array of files with a ._
prefix. I assume those are the resource fork files, and I am guessing that
is how they display in someoneıs email attachment list.

Sorry to interfere with your support, but I did learn something too. Thanks.

Best,

 - Bill
On 6/1/04 11:59 AM, in article BCE2201D.669E5%berkowit@spoof_silcom.com,
"Paul Berkowitz" <berkowit@spoof_silcom.com> wrote:

> It's not Mac users who have to deal with it if they don't want to. It's
> Windows users. Windows programs are supposed to know not to display the
> resource-fork-extra-file which is specified as mac-only in AppleDouble
> encoding. But some do. And we have to put up with winmail,dat files coming
> from Outlook.
>
> Whether you like it or not, Bill, AppleDouble DOES send attachments encoded
> with extra mac-only material: it's not supposed to appear as a file, but is
> separately encoded. That's what the "Double" means. The second encoding (or
> "file") has the creator-type and file-type information which allows Mac mail
> recipients to know which application can open it and which icon to display,
> even if there's no extension on the file name. (Now in Mac OS X, mac files
> are no longer required to have creator type and file type if they have an
> extension, but most still do. In OS 9 and earlier, it was absolute.) On
> Windows, you need an extension for that. On Mac OS X, either creator type or
> extension will do. Mac email programs still send out the creator and file
> type file in case the recipient is a mac program that needs it, when sending
> AppleDouble encoding. They also include header information such as:
>
> x-mac-creator="53495421";
> x-mac-type="53495435"
>
> in the message headers for the attachment, and then proceeds to encode the
> main file in mime/base64. A Windows program is supposed to notice those two
> headers and ignore the mac-only stuff. Some of them aren't configured with
> that in mind, and so display the mac-only encoding as if it were a separate
> file.
>
> Entourage is doing the right thing. It's a mail protocol. It's the Windows
> mail recipients which aren't doing the right thing.
>
> If you don't want this to happen, then on your end you can choose to encode
> as mime/base64 instead. All your Windows recipients will be happy, and many
> Mac recipients, especially on OS X, will also manage just fine. As long as
> they can receive attachments from Windows OK, they can also get these OK
> from you. Always remember to include the extension; that way Windows and Mac
> OS X and even Mac OS 9 recipients with File Exchange set up OK will know
> what to do with these.
>