Decoding uuencoded text in message body

[Man-wai Chang]

Is there a Thunderbird add-on to do it? Some mobile phones are sending
uuencoded text as attachment to newsgroups.

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[Mike Easter]

Man-wai Chang wrote:
Subject: Decoding uuencoded text in message body

> Is there a Thunderbird add-on to do it?

Grrr.

The/Your subject content is not part of the/your message body. Your
message body should contain all of the essential elements to your
message question. The question in your message body has insufficient
information to provide context for the respondent answer. The respondent
'must' paste your subject into the message body for context.

If you start a new message question by typing in the subject first, it
tends to 'mess up' how the message is structured.

(If you) Start a new message question by creating an unambiguous and
complete message body first. Then give it a very brief subject title and
it will all work together better.

> Some mobile phones are sending uuencoded text as attachment to
> newsgroups.

Native Tbird can decode uue. However, it is necessary for any uuencoded
message body to have properly 'announced'- compliantly - the uue
conditions in the headers.

Someone recently asked here about mobile phones with b64 encoding which
wasn't being handled correctly by Tbird. When I searched on that, there
was information that the mobile phone wasn't handling its b64 header
requirements properly. I'm guessing that you are experiencing the same
kind of problem.

--
Mike Easter

[Chris Ilias]

On 11-04-30 9:44 AM, Man-wai Chang wrote:
> Is there a Thunderbird add-on to do it? Some mobile phones are sending
> uuencoded text as attachment to newsgroups.

The Mnenhy extension adds UUEncode/UUDecode.
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/mnenhy/>

--
Chris Ilias <http://ilias.ca>
Mailing list/Newsgroup moderator

[Mike Easter]

Chris Ilias wrote:

> On 1Man-wai Chang wrote:
>> Is there a Thunderbird add-on to do it? Some mobile phones are sending
>> uuencoded text as attachment to newsgroups.
>
> The Mnenhy extension adds UUEncode/UUDecode.
> <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/mnenhy/>

I'm not clear here on what is being solved.

I've read the Mnenhy description about what it can do about

// Mnenhy adds two new context menu items for encoding/decoding text to
the mail editor, the mail display, the browser, the source view and
Chatzilla. Available codecs are currently ROT-13, Base64,
UUEncode/UUDecode, encodeURI/decodeURI and similar, Unicode/number
representation, Kenny-Speak, 1337-Speak, Morse, Reverse, toUpperCase,
toLowerCase and the evaluation of selections.//

but...

Tbird native can decode UUE attachments and if I use uue encoding with
OE to send an attachment which is plaintext uue encoded and I also
configure Tbird to display the attachment inline, then I can read the
uue encoded text attachment content in the body of native Tbird just fine.

So, ? what does one need Mnenhy for (about this issue) ? - given that it
isn't completely clear to me exactly what kind of problem the OP had in
the first place.

--
Mike Easter

[Man-wai Chang]

> The Mnenhy extension adds UUEncode/UUDecode.
> <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/mnenhy/>

I dunno how to use the extension.

I tried Vew Message Source, Mark All Text, Right click, UUDECODE.
Nothing happened, only the font of text changed.

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and farces be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.38.4

^ ^ 15:59:01 up 6 days 20:00 1 user load average: 1.01 1.06 1.07

[Man-wai Chang]

> Native Tbird can decode uue. However, it is necessary for any uuencoded
> message body to have properly 'announced'- compliantly - the uue
> conditions in the headers.
> Someone recently asked here about mobile phones with b64

> encoding which wasn't being handled correctly by Tbird....

That's exactly the reason why I HOPE Thunderbird could help. Many mobile
phones' email clients don't follow standards. It's hard to
ask those email clients to be corrected by their programmers.

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and farces be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.38.4

^ ^ 15:59:01 up 6 days 20:00 1 user load average: 1.01 1.06 1.07

[Mike Easter]

Man-wai Chang wrote:
> <my cite>

>> Native Tbird can decode uue. However, it is necessary for any
>> uuencoded message body to have properly 'announced'- compliantly -
>> the uue conditions in the headers.

What I said there is not strictly correct about how uue attachment is
constructed. Headers are not involved.

>> Someone recently asked here about mobile phones with b64 encoding
>> which wasn't being handled correctly by Tbird....

b64 encoding and its header structure is one thing; uue encoding
attachment method is another.

> That's exactly the reason why I HOPE Thunderbird could help. Many
> mobile phones' email clients don't follow standards. It's hard to ask
> those email clients to be corrected by their programmers.

Nonono. The world isn't supposed to change email standards because
mobile phones want to do emailing too. The mobile phones which want to
communicate on the internet are going to have to follow the standards.

Earlier I said:

> Tbird native can decode UUE attachments and if I use uue encoding
> with OE to send an attachment which is plaintext uue encoded and I
> also configure Tbird to display the attachment inline, then I can
> read the uue encoded text attachment content in the body of native
> Tbird just fine.

That is, I sent a message with 'some text' in the message body and
'somemore text' as a uue-encoded text.txt attachment to that message
because you had said earlier:

> Some mobile phones are sending uuencoded text as attachment to
> newsgroups.

The structure of that uue text attachment message that I sent had
nothing in the headers about the uue, just the standard uue 'begin 666'
structure in the body.

The structure showed:

(I'm going to paste the structure below as a citation for illustration
to try to avoid newsagent reader begin interpretation confusion )

> some text
>
> begin 666 text.txt
> <this 'somemore text' content is in uue>
>
> end

and thunderbird (in display attachments inline mode) displayed that as

some text

somemore text

By your request, you would say that somehow the rest of the internet
messaging world is supposed to reinvent itself so that the mistakes of
the mobile phone programmers can be accommodated.

--
Mike Easter

[Mike Easter]

Mike Easter wrote:
>> <my cite>
>
>>> Native Tbird can decode uue. However, it is necessary for any
>>> uuencoded message body to have properly 'announced'- compliantly -
>>> the uue conditions in the headers.
>
> What I said there is not strictly correct about how uue attachment is
> constructed. Headers are not involved.

... except to the extent that the header's MIME line is missing from the
uue attached message I sent.

MIME-Version: 1.0

> The structure of that uue text attachment message that I sent had
> nothing in the headers about the uue, just the standard uue 'begin 666'
> structure in the body.

Altho' there was nothing in the headers about the uue, the/my OE message
header did *not* have the MIME-Version: 1.0 line.

In OE, to use uue for the attachment, you turn off the MIME in favor of
the uue.

That MIME line also played a role in the issue being discussed about
mobile phones when we were talking about b64 encoding.

--
Mike Easter

[Ralph Fox]

On Sun, 01 May 2011 02:42:00 -0700, in message
news://news.mozilla.org/x_qdnU5TJ9F0tyDQ...@mozilla.org
Mike Easter wrote:

> Man-wai Chang wrote:
>> <my cite>
>
>>> Native Tbird can decode uue. However, it is necessary for any
>>> uuencoded message body to have properly 'announced'- compliantly -
>>> the uue conditions in the headers.
>
> What I said there is not strictly correct about how uue attachment is
> constructed. Headers are not involved.

IIRC Thunderbird will not decode uuencoded data when the message
has MIME message headers, for example
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

To Thunderbird, MIME and uuencoding are mutually exclusive.

>>> Someone recently asked here about mobile phones with b64 encoding
>>> which wasn't being handled correctly by Tbird....
>
> b64 encoding and its header structure is one thing; uue encoding
> attachment method is another.
>
>> That's exactly the reason why I HOPE Thunderbird could help. Many
>> mobile phones' email clients don't follow standards. It's hard to ask
>> those email clients to be corrected by their programmers.
>
> Nonono. The world isn't supposed to change email standards because
> mobile phones want to do emailing too. The mobile phones which want to
> communicate on the internet are going to have to follow the standards.

There is no standard to say whether MIME message headers and uuencoding
are mutually exclusive, or not mutually exclusive.

--
Kind regards
Ralph Fox