metasend(1)

okay so welcome to metasend(1), from the General Commands Manual — the slightly chaotic little gremlin for sending non-text mail. She’s crude, she’s iconic, and she’s about to explain exactly how to yeet a data file into someone’s inbox. 💌

🌸 NAME 🌸

metasend — a Crude interface for sending non-text mail

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

metasend [-b] [-c cc] [-F from] [-e encoding] [-f filename] [-m MIME-type] [-s subject] [-S splitsize] [-t to] [-z] [-n] [-D content-description] [-o outputfile] [-/ multipart-subtype] [-E] [-P preamble-file]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

The metasend program lets a user send one or more pre-existing data files as non-text multimedia mail. Yes bestie, actual files, not just text. Slay.

With no arguments, the program will ask the user for the To, Subject, and CC fields. Then it asks for the name of a MIME content-type. Next, it asks the user for the name of an existing file containing that type of data. After that, it asks what encoding type, if any, should be applied to this data. Finally, it asks if the user wants to include information from an additional file — and if so, the last three questions get repeated for the next file. 🌀

Alternately, all of this information can be provided on the command line, using the following options:

• -b — specifies Batch (non-interactive) Mode. It will exit with an error message if all additional needed information is not provided on the command line.
• -c cc — specifies the CC address.
• -D description — specifies a string to be used as the Content-description value.
• -e encoding — specifies the encoding type. Must be either "base64", "quoted-printable", "7bit", or "x-uue". "7bit" means no encoding is performed.
• -E — specifies that the file being included is already a full MIME entity, and does not need to have any Content-* or other header fields added.
• -f filename — specifies the file containing the data.
• -F from — specifies the From address.
• -i "<content-id> — specifies the content-id value for the MIME entity. Must be a legal content-id value, enclosed in angle brackets.
• -I "<content-id>" — specifies the content-id for the multipart entity being created by metasend, if any. Must be a legal content-id value, enclosed in angle brackets.
• -m MIME-type — specifies the MIME content-type.
• -n — specifies that an additional file is to be included. Before each use of the -n option on the command line, the options -m, -c, and -f, at a minimum, must have appeared, and must appear separately for each included file.
• -o outputfile — specifies that the output from metasend should go to a named file rather than be delivered as mail.
• -P preamblefile — specifies a file containing alternative text to be put in the "preamble" area of a MIME multipart message.
• -s subject — specifies the Subject field.
• -S splitsize — specifies the maximum size before splitting into parts via splitmail(1).
• -t to — specifies the To address.
• -z — specifies that the temporary files should be deleted EVEN IF DELIVERY FAILS.
• -/ subtype — specifies the use of a MIME multipart subtype other than "mixed".

This is intended largely for mail hackers. A much friendlier interface to non-text mail is provided by mailto(1). 🫶

If more than one file is given, the parts will be combined into a single multipart MIME object.

The mail will be delivered using the splitmail(1) program, so if it is very long it will arrive as several pieces which can be automatically reassembled by metamail. The definition of "very long" can be altered using the -S flag or the SPLITSIZE environment variable, as described in the splitmail(1) man page.

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• audiosend(1)
• mailto-hebrew(1)
• mailto(1)
• metamail(1)
• mmencode(1)
• splitmail(1)

💀 BUGS 💀

Should do a better job of choosing the encoding if you don’t specify one.

Should do MIME syntax checking on user-supplied content-type fields. Users are all too likely to provide bogus MIME content-type values, alas. In particular, there are various characters that are not allowed in parameters unless the parameters are enclosed in double quotes, but this sort of restriction is hard to enforce in a shell script! 😭

👑 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 "AS IS", WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES.

🌈 AUTHOR 🌈

Nathaniel S. Borenstein, Bellcore

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💖 and that’s the whole vibe, bestie: this was metasend(1), Release 1 — no date in the footer, so we’re just gonna slay with that. 🎀