MAILCAP(5) File Formats Manual MAILCAP(5)
NAME
mailcap - metamail capabilities file
DESCRIPTION
The mailcap file is read by the metamail program to determine how to
display non-text at the local site.
The syntax of a mailcap file is quite simple, at least compared to
termcap files. Any line that starts with "#" is a comment. Blank
lines are ignored. Otherwise, each line defines a single mailcap entry
for a single content type. Long lines may be continued by ending them
with a backslash character, \.
Each individual mailcap entry consists of a content-type specification,
a command to execute, and (possibly) a set of optional "flag" values.
For example, a very simple mailcap entry (which is actually a built-in
default behavior for metamail) would look like this:
text/plain; cat %s
The optional flags can be used to specify additional information about
the mail-handling command. For example:
text/plain; cat %s; copiousoutput
can be used to indicate that the output of the 'cat' command may be vo-
luminous, requiring either a scrolling window, a pager, or some other
appropriate coping mechanism.
The "type" field (text/plain, in the above example) is simply any legal
content type name, as defined by informational RFC 1524. In practice,
this is almost any string. It is the string that will be matched
against the "Content-type" header (or the value passed in with -c) to
decide if this is the mailcap entry that matches the current message.
Additionally, the type field may specify a subtype (e.g.
"text/ISO-8859-1") or a wildcard to match all subtypes (e.g. "im-
age/*").
The "command" field is any UNIX command ("cat %s" in the above exam-
ple), and is used to specify the interpreter for the given type of mes-
sage. It will be passed to the shell via the system(3) facility.
Semicolons and backslashes within the command must be quoted with back-
slashes. If the command contains "%s", those two characters will be
replaced by the name of a file that contains the body of the message.
If it contains "%t", those two characters will be replaced by the con-
tent-type field, including the subtype, if any. (That is, if the con-
tent-type was "image/pbm; opt1=something-else", then "%t" would be re-
placed by "image/pbm".) If the command field contains "%{" followed
by a parameter name and a closing "}", then all those characters will
be replaced by the value of the named parameter, if any, from the Con-
tent-type header. Thus, in the previous example, "%{opt1}" will be
replaced by "something-else". Finally, if the command contains "\%",
those two characters will be replaced by a single % character. (In
fact, the backslash can be used to quote any character, including it-
self.)
If no "%s" appears in the command field, then instead of placing the
message body in a temporary file, metamail will pass the body to the
command on the standard input. This is helpful in saving /tmp file
space, but can be problematic for window-oriented applications under
some window systems such as MGR.
Two special codes can appear in the viewing command for objects of type
multipart (any subtype). These are "%n" and "%F". %n will be replaced
by the number of parts within the multipart object. %F will be re-
placed by a series of arguments, two for each part, giving first the
content-type and then the name of the temporary file where the decoded
part has been stored. In addition, for each file created by %F, a sec-
ond file is created, with the same name followed by "H", which contains
the header information for that body part. This will not be needed by
most multipart handlers, but it is there if you ever need it.
The "notes=xxx" field is an uninterpreted string that is used to spec-
ify the name of the person who installed this entry in the mailcap
file. (The "xxx" may be replaced by any text string.)
The "test=xxx" field is a command that is executed to determine whether
or not the mailcap line actually applies. That is, if the content-type
field matches the content-type on the message, but a "test=" field is
present, then the test must succeed before the mailcap line is consid-
ered to "match" the message being viewed. The command may be any UNIX
command, using the same syntax and the same %-escapes as for the view-
ing command, as described above. A command is considered to succeed if
it exits with a zero exit status, and to fail otherwise.
The "print=xxx" field is a command that is executed to print the data
instead of display it interactively. This behavior is usually a conse-
quence of invoking metamail with the "-h" switch.
The "textualnewlines" field can be used in the rather obscure case
where metamail's default rules for treating newlines in base64-encoded
data are unsatisfactory. By default, metamail will translate CRLF to
the local newline character in decoded base64 output if the content-
type is "text" (any subtype), but will not do so otherwise. A mailcap
entry with a field of "textualnewlines=1" will force such translation
for the specified content-type, while "textualnewlines=0" will guaran-
tee that the translation does not take place even for textual content-
types.
The "compose" field may be used to specify a program that can be used
to compose a new body or body part in the given format. Its intended
use is to support mail composing agents that support the composition of
multiple types of mail using external composing agents. As with the
view-command, the compose command will be executed after replacing cer-
tain escape sequences starting with "%". In particular, %s should be
replaced by the name of a file to which the composed data is to be
written by the specified composing program, thus allowing the calling
program (e.g. metamail) to tell the called program where to store the
composed data. If %s does not appear, then the composed data will be
assumed to be written by the composing programs to standard output.
The result of the composing program may be data that is NOT yet suit-
able for mail transport -- that is, a Content-Transfer-Encoding may
still need to be applied to the data.
The "composetyped" field is similar to the "compose" field, but is to
be used when the composing program needs to specify the Content-type
header field to be applied to the composed data. The "compose" field
is simpler, and is preferred for use with existing (non-mail-oriented)
programs for composing data in a given format. The "composetyped"
field is necessary when the Content-type information must include aux-
iliary parameters, and the composition program must then know enough
about mail formats to produce output that includes the mail type infor-
mation, and to apply any necessary Content-Transfer-Encoding. Concep-
tually, "compose" specifies a program that simply outputs the specified
type of data in its raw form, while "composetyped" specifies a program
that outputs the data as a MIME object, with all necessary Content-*
headers already in place.
needsterminal
If this flag is given, the named interpreter needs to interact
with the user on a terminal. In some environments (e.g. a win-
dow-oriented mail reader under X11) this will require the cre-
ation of a new terminal emulation window, while in most envi-
ronments it will not. If the mailcap entry specifies "need-
sterminal" and metamail is not running on a terminal (as deter-
mined by isatty(3), the -x option, and the MM_NOTTTY environ-
ment variable) then metamail will try to run the command in a
new terminal emulation window. Currently, metamail knows how
to create new windows under the X11, SunTools, and WM window
systems.
copiousoutput
This flag should be given whenever the interpreter is capable
of producing more than a few lines of output on stdout, and
does no interaction with the user. If the mailcap entry speci-
fies copiousoutput, and pagination has been requested via the
"-p" command, then the output of the command being executed
will be piped through a pagination program ("more" by default,
but this can be overridden with the METAMAIL_PAGER environment
variable).
BUILT-IN CONTENT-TYPE SUPPORT
The metamail program has built-in support for a few key content-types.
In particular, it supports the text type, the multipart and multi-
part/alternative type, and the message/rfc822 types. This support is
incomplete for many subtypes -- for example, it only supports US-ASCII
text in general. This kind of built-in support can be OVERRIDDEN by an
entry in any mailcap file on the user's search path. Metamail also has
rudimentary built-in support for types that are totally unrecognized --
i.e. for which no mailcap entry or built-in handler exists. For such
unrecognized types, metamail will write a file with a "clean" copy of
the data -- i.e. a copy in which all mail headers have been removed,
and in which any 7-bit transport encoding has been decoded.
FILES
$HOME/.mailcap:/etc/mailcap:/usr/share/etc/mailcap:/usr/local/etc/mail-
cap -- default path for mailcap files.
SEE ALSO
run-mailcap(1), mailcap.order(5), update-mime(8)
RFC 1524 (<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1524>)
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 per-
taining to this material without the specific, prior written permission
of an authorized representative of Bellcore. BELLCORE MAKES NO REPRE-
SENTATIONS ABOUT THE ACCURACY OR SUITABILITY OF THIS MATERIAL FOR ANY
PURPOSE. IT IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WAR-
RANTIES.
AUTHOR
Nathaniel S. Borenstein
Bellcore Prototype Release 2 MAILCAP(5)