mimencode(1)                     DG/UX R4.11                    mimencode(1)


NAME
       mimencode - translate mail-oriented encoding formats

SYNOPSIS
       mimencode [-u] [-b] [-q] [-p] [filename]

DESCRIPTION
       The mimencode program is a format translator that simply converts a
       byte stream into (or out of) one of the standard mail encoding
       formats defined by MIME, the proposed standard for Internet
       multimedia mail formats.

       By default, mimencode reads from the standard input and sends a
       base64-encoded version of the input to standard output.

   Options
       mimencode uses the following command line options:


              -b        tells mimencode to use "base64" encoding (not
                        necessary to specify since this is the default).

              -q        tells mimencode to use the "quoted-printable"
                        encoding instead of base64.


              -u        tells mimencode to decode standard input rather than
                        encode it.


              -p        tells mimencode to translate decoded CRLF sequences
                        into the local newline convention during decoding
                        and to do the reverse during encoding.  This option
                        is only meaningful when -b (base64 encoding) is in
                        effect.

              filename  when given, tells mimencode to read input from the
                        named file rather than from standard input.

USAGE
       MIME encoding is used because binary data cannot be sent through the
       mail.  The encodings understood by mimencode may be preferable to the
       use of the uuencode/uudecode programs.

       mimencode is intended to be a replacement for uuencode for mail and
       news use, primarily because uuencode uses characters that don't
       translate well across all mail gateways (particularly ASCII <->
       EBCDIC gateways).  Also, uuencode is not standard (there are several
       variants encoding and decoding in different and incompatible ways and
       with no standard on which to base an implementation).  Additionally,
       uuencode does not always work well in a pipe, although some variants
       have been modified to do so.

       mimencode implements the encodings which were defined for MIME as
       uuencode replacements and is expected to be more robust for email
       use.

SEE ALSO
       mailto(1), metamail(1), mime(5)

NOTICES
       Author is Nathaniel S. Borenstein, Bell Communications Research, Inc.


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