Mime Line Length Problem

[Jack Trachtman]

OpenVMS V8.3
TCPIP V5.6
MIME v1.93

I've been creating CSV files in DCL, then using MIME to attach the files and send them. When the user (on a PC) clicks on the attachment, Excel opens and reads the file.

I've just discovered that if my records are longer than 132 characters, the lines get wrapped! I created a file w/lines from 130-140 characters to confirm this.

Is there any way around this?

TIA

[John Gillings · Accepted solution]

Jack,

At what stage are the lines being wrapped? Check carefully.

I have a job which generates several CSV files, some of which have lines thousands of characters long. On the OpenVMS system, I then ZIP them, add the ZIP into a MIME file and send by SMTP mail. At the other end, open the ZIP and then the CSV file into Excel. No problem. The only trick was to use MIME> ADD/BINARY for the ZIP

I haven't actually tried sending the CSV directly.

In generating the CSVs from Oracle/SQLplus (now there's a misnomer!), I had all manner of problems with line lengths - ended up tagging start and end of the rows, then using a perl script to strip white space and glue the lines back together.

[Joseph Huber_1]

It must be the the receiving mail reader breaking the lines in the display.

I just did test sending a text file with lines longer than 132 characters to a linux/thunderbird system:
Thunderbird breaks the lines in display, but saving the attached file keeps the long lines intact.

[Jack Trachtman]

Joseph,

I found the same thing - if I sent my CSV file within the body of the e-mail, I could copy the body to Notepad & save it. It would then open correctly in Excel.

John,

Zipping my files before using MIME allows me to send the longer lines.

Thanks

[Joseph Huber_1]

Jack, You probably were just happy sending long lines in the body, and receiving them intact.
Depending on the mail agents involved, this is not guaranted.
I did send it as a quoted-printable attachment:
since CSV files are text, quoted-printable is enough, and saves one step over zip+mime.

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] using MIME [...]

Not a very detailed description of what you
did.

> [...] the lines get wrapped!

The obvious question would be, "By whom?".

> [...] quoted-printable is enough, [...]

It's worth a try, if the ever-troublesome
MIME utility can do it right. There's also
mpack+munpack, of course.

[Jack Trachtman]

The following may be useful to others:

In the MIME utility, I had been ADDing my files w/the default content-type. I have discovered that the following seems to cure my problem of lines wrapping:

$ MIME
MIME> NEW/NOEDIT outputfile
MIME> ADD/CONTENT-TYPE="text/csv" filename
...

[Mike Kier]

If you have MIME$FILETYPES.DAT in either SYS$MANAGER or your SYS$LOGIN directory the association is made automatically.

From MIME> HEMP SHOW FILE_TYPES MIME$FILETYPES.DAT:

The FILE_TYPES table is constructed from program built-in types and is read from the simple comma separated list in the MIME$FILETYPES.DAT configuration files, (if they exist).

System-wide FILE_TYPES are specified by the file SYS$MANAGER:MIME$FILETYPES.DAT and can be supplemented with additional entries found in the SYS$LOGIN:MIME$FILETYPES.DAT file.

The table is constructed beginning with the built-in types, then adding the system definitions from SYS$MANAGER:MIME$FILETYPES.DAT, and ending with data from the SYS$LOGIN:MIME$FILETYPES.DAT file.

The entries are displayed in order of the most recently defined (LIFO) entries. In the case of duplicate entries, the first entry is used. This allows a user to customize their own environment while the system manager defines a default system or site environment for all users.

[Jack Trachtman]

Mike,

Was the file MIME$FILETYPES.DAT supposed to have been automatically installed, or am I supposed to create it following the example in the MIME HELP SHOW FILE_TYPES? It doesn't exist on my systems.

[Mike Kier]

I'm not sure where ours came from, but you can get a reasonably good one from http://wwwvms.mppmu.mpg.de/vms$common/sysmgr/mime$filetypes.dat