topic Re: Sending HTML email from VMS? in Operating System - OpenVMS

Sending HTML email from VMS?

roose — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 02:40:50 GMT

Hi Folks,

I've been trying to look for a procedure to do this but so far, I have been unlucky. There might be some thread on the ITRC before, but no luck as well using the forum search utility.

What I wanted to do is basically, create an HTML file on our VMS node, then send it through SMTP. Once my email client receives it (Lotus Notes), I want to see the HTML output itself, not an HTML attachment file. Is this possible? I already saw some threads about MIME and SFF and was able to test it but the file is being sent as an attachment, not the mail body itself.

Also, is there a better search tool to use when looking for some information on the ITRC? It seems that the search tool here produces more miss than hits when I try to find some keywords.

Re: Sending HTML email from VMS?

Joseph Huber_1 — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 03:40:22 GMT

A little trick doing that was posted to comp.os.vms recently: it works by placing the MIME header in the VMS mail SUBJECT.

The saved command-file can be picked up from
http://wwwvms.mppmu.mpg.de/util_root/com/misc/send_html.com

This trick of course is not guaranted to work with future VMS mail versions.

Certainly You could construct a file for SFF, (using one of the mentioned examples), but instead of building headers for attachments, build a header for HTML in the body:

"Mime-Version: 1.0"
"Content-Type: text/HTML"

followed by the HTML file content.

Re: Sending HTML email from VMS?

Robert Gezelter — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 04:10:42 GMT

Roose,

Before the MIME utility existed, and on several other occasions for a variety of reasons, I used C-Kermit (which is available at low cost from the Kermit Project at http://www.columbia.edu/kermit ) to manually do the SMTP protocol exchanges with the local SMTP Server. Using a command file, and a Kermit Script, I was able to totally control the details of the message, and generate whatever message was necessary for the application.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

Re: Sending HTML email from VMS?

Joseph Huber_1 — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 05:47:59 GMT

I produced a variant of a command-procedure, now sending a pure MIME header for HTML body, which uses TCPIP send-from-file (SFF) utility, and therefore does not rely on the trick mentioned in my previous reply.

http://wwwvms.mppmu.mpg.de/util_root/com/send_html.com

Re: Sending HTML email from VMS?

Robert Atkinson — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 03:54:32 GMT

Roose - our DCL version (attached) of HTML emails with file attachments.

Rob.

Re: Sending HTML email from VMS?

roose — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 04:29:29 GMT

Hi Folks,

Thanks for your help! The procedures given by Joseph and Rob provided what I was looking for.

I am now closing this thread. Thanks again to all who replied.