Ubuntu Manpage: uuenview - a powerful encoder for binary files

NAME

       uuenview - a powerful encoder for binary files

SYNOPSIS

       uuenview [options] file(s)

DESCRIPTION

       uuenview  encodes a binary file into ASCII text for sending over non-8-bit electronic data
       channels, such as electronic mail or the usenet.  uuenview is  a  superset  of  and  fully
       backwards  compatible  with  the  standard uuencode(1) command, featuring more comfort and
       more flexibility.

       Files encoded with uuenview are compatible with virtually all decoders,  as  long  as  the
       encoding  method  (see  below)  is  supported  by the remote side. If the remote side uses
       uudeview(1), there shouldn't be any problems at all.

       If properly configured, uuenview can directly send  encoded  files  by  email  or  to  the
       usenet.  These  messages  are  wrapped  into a proper MIME envelope, which is handy if the
       recipient uses MIME-compliant mail or news software.

OPTIONS

ENCODING SELECTION
-b Chooses the Base64 encoding method as specified by the MIME standard.

-u Chooses the uuencoding method, for compatibility with uuencode(1).

-y Chooses the yEncoding method.

-x Chooses the now obsolete xxencoding method.

-t Sends the file(s) as plain text.

-q Encodes the file(s) using quoted printable encoding.

These options are positional and affect the encoding of all remaining files on the command
line until changed.

When sending, posting or attaching files, the default is to use Base64, resulting in MIME
compliant messages. Otherwise, when encoding to standard output or into a file, the
default is to use uuencoding.

TARGETS
-o Specifies that output shall be written into files. These files will have the same
base name as the source file and an extension of .001, .002 etc, depending on the
number of parts required by the -lines option. The encoded files are written to the
current directory.

-od path
Same as '-o', but the encoded files are written to the given directory instead.

-m email
Mails the encoded file(s), each one probably split into multiple parts, to the
given email address. Multiple recipients can be given as a quoted, comma-separated
list. On Unix systems, mail is usually piped to sendmail(8).

-p newsgroup
Posts the encoded file(s), each one probably split into multiple parts, to the
given newsgroup. Multiple newsgroups can be given as a quoted, comma-separated
list. The inews(1) program is invoked for posting. You may have to set the
NNTPSERVER environment variable to your news server.

-a Attaches files. This feature is expected to be used from shell scripts and the
like. In attach mode, a message is read from standard input, complete with headers.
The files given on the command line are then "attached" to the message, which is
converted, if necessary, to a proper MIME multipart format. The -a option can be
combined with -m or -p in order to directly mail or post the result. Else, the
message, complete with attachments, is written to standard output.

Uudeview is using a heuristic to determine where the provided message headers end
and the message body starts. If the first line does not start with either From or
some non-whitespace characters followed by a colon (e.g. "X-header-blah:" or
"Patch#1:") uuenview interprets the whole input as message body. Else anything
before the first empty line is interpreted as headers and the rest of the provided
input is taken as message body.

If no target option is given, the encoded data is printed to standard output.

HEADERS
When mailing or posting a file, it is possible to set certain headers. Be careful to
quote parameters that consist of more than one word.

-s subject
Set the Subject: header line. The file name and part number are automatically
appended. Without this, a default subject header is generated.

-f from
Set the From: header line.

-r reply
Set the Reply-To: header line.

OTHER
-v Verbosely prints everything the program's trying to do.

-lines Substituting lines with a number, sets the maximum number of encoded lines per
part. The encoded data is automatically split into as many parts as required. Line
counts less than 200 are ignored. The uuencoding and xxencoding methods encode 45k,
and Base64 encodes 57k of data in 1000 lines. If this option is not specified, the
default is unlimited lines per part, resulting in exactly one part.

file(s)
One or more filenames to be processed. To encode a file from the standard input,
use a single hyphen '-' and give a filename to be used for the encoded file as the
next parameter.

Options may also be set in the $UUENVIEW environment variable, which is read before
processing the options on the command line.

NOTES

       Files read from standard input can only be used once, meaning  that  at  most  one  target
       option may be given.

       Output  written to standard output cannot be split into multiple parts.  In this case, the
       -lines option is ignored.

       uuenview must be correctly configured at compile time in order for mailing and posting  to
       work.  If  it  doesn't, consult your system administrator.  The program used for posting a
       file can be set at runtime using the INEWS environment variable.  This  setting  overrides
       the compile-time configuration.

       Base64  is  not  MIME. Base64 is the encoding specified by the MIME standard, but in order
       for a message to become a proper MIME message, a number of headers are required.  uuenview
       produces  these  headers  when mailing or posting, but not when writing to a file. In this
       case, uuenview does not have any control over the headers. If you  include  Base64  output
       into your messages, they are not MIME-compliant!

       If you rename, copy or link the program to uuencode, it may act as a smart replacement for
       the standard, accepting the same command-line syntax. This has not been well-tested yet.

EXAMPLES

       uuenview -m 'root,fred@somewhere.com' uudeview.tgz
              Encodes the file uudeview.tgz and mails it to both your local system  administrator
              and to your friend Fred at the Somewhere company.

       If  you  give  more  than  one  filename on the command line, each file is usually handled
       separately. A workaround is to send them all as attachment to a single (or empty) mail:

       uuenview -m root -b -a file1 file2 < /dev/null
              Creates an empty mail and attaches the two given files, encoded in  Base64  format,
              and mails the result to your system administrator.

BUGS

       The program does not detect error conditions when mailing or posting.

       Attaching  only  works  reliably  if  certain  headers  of  the input message (for example
       Content-Type) are not folded and shorter than 1024 characters.

       It is not possible to encode into BinHex.

       The program will quite likely fail to handle binary  data  as  input  for  plain  text  or
       quoted-printable  attachments.  On  plain  text attachments, the line length (must be less
       than 998 characters according to MIME) is not enforced.

       It is not possible to set the "charset" value of plain text attachments.

       It is not possible to set the content type value of attachments.

       sendmail(8) stops reading upon a line consisting only of a single dot.  uudeview does  not
       check  plain  text  input files against this condition. (The problem is worked around when
       using quoted-printable, and does not exist with the other encodings.)

                                            June 2001                                 UUENVIEW(1)