UUENVIEW(1) General Commands Manual UUENVIEW(1)
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 flex-
ibility.
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 prob-
lems 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 uuen-
code(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 stan-
dard 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 di-
rectory 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 in-
voked for posting. You may have to set the NNTPSERVER environ-
ment 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 con-
verted, 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 attach-
ments, 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 en-
coded 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 admin-
istrator. The program used for posting a file can be set at runtime
using the INEWS environment variable. This setting overrides the com-
pile-time configuration.
Base64 is not MIME. Base64 is the encoding specified by the MIME stan-
dard, 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, uuen-
view 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 attach-
ment 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 adminis-
trator.
SEE ALSO
uudeview(1), uuencode(1), uudecode(1), sendmail(8), inews(1).
The uudeview homepage on the Web,
http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview/
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 charac-
ters.
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 attach-
ments.
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)