1**************************************************************** 2Copyright (c) 1991 Bell Communications Research, Inc. (Bellcore) 3 4Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this material 5for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided 6that the above copyright notice and this permission notice 7appear in all copies, and that the name of Bellcore not be 8used in advertising or publicity pertaining to this 9material without the specific, prior written permission 10of an authorized representative of Bellcore. BELLCORE 11MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE ACCURACY OR SUITABILITY 12OF THIS MATERIAL FOR ANY PURPOSE. IT IS PROVIDED "AS IS", 13WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES. 14**************************************************************** 15 16I. INTRODUCTION 17 18This is a tree of files that will build the metamail program, which can 19be used to turn virtually any mail-reading program into a multimedia 20mail reader, as well as programs that will allow metamail to display 21several specific types of multimedia mail. 22 23Metamail is an implementation of MIME, the Multipurpose Internet 24Mail Extensions, a proposed standard for multimedia mail on the Internet. 25Metamail implements MIME, and also implements extensibility and 26configuration via the "mailcap" mechanism described in an informational 27RFC that is a companion to the MIME document. 28 29II. BUILDING METAMAIL 30 31To compile metamail and a few useful applications, just type "make" in 32the top-level directory. Note that you may need to change the line in 33the top-level Makefile that defines the ATOMICMAIL constant. 34This should be the empty string if you have the metamail distribution 35WITHOUT the ATOMICMAIL software, and should be set to 36"atomicmail" if you have the fuller, more proprietary distribution. 37 38II.a. SITE CONFIGURATION 39 40There are a few things that are site-configurable before the build. 41If you want to check them over, look in "config.h" in the top-level 42directory. Also, if you need to change the CFLAGS Makefile variable, 43you can just change it in the top-level Makefile and it will propogate 44to the subdirectories as long as you always do a top-level make instead 45of cd'ing to a subdirectory and typing make. Similarly, you can change 46the LDLIBS variable in the top-level Makefile and it will be passed 47down automatically. LDLIBS may be necessary in order to get the 48gethostname() call to compile, in particular. Users of System V or 49other systems without symbolic links should also remove the "-s" 50from the definition of "LN" in the top-level Makefile. If you're using 51the non-ASCII fonts from the fonts directory, and you plan to install 52them in a system font directory, you'll probably want to change the value 53for MYFONTDIR in each of the '*.source" files in the "fonts" directory. 54 55If you're using a version of UNIX that is System-V based but doe not 56define "SYSV" as a C preprocessor constant, you'll need to add the line 57"#define SYSV" near the top of config.h. (One notable operating system 58in this category is some versions of AIX. However, config.h will 59automatically turn on "SYSV" if "AIX" is defined, as it is in recent 60releases of AIX.) 61 62Finally, if you have the distribution that includes the ATOMICMAIL system, 63there is a file called "site.h" in the top-level ATOMICMAIL directory, 64in which further customization is possible. 65 66II.b. THE DIRECTORY STRUCTURE 67 68Although you probably don't need to know such details, the distribution comes 69with 4 or 5 source directories: "metamail" contains the metamail 70program itself. "richmail" contains the programs for dealing with 71email's "richtext" format. "ezview" contains a simple program for 72transforming Andrew-format mail to plain text. "fonts" contains data 73and scripts for display non-ASCII mail bodies, about which more is 74said in a special section below. "misc" contains a 75number of shell scripts for viewing images, audio, partial messages, 76external messages, etc., and rudimentary shell scripts for SENDING 77non-text mail. Finally, if you have the version of the distribution that 78includes the ATOMICMAIL software, this is contained in the 79"atomicmail" subdirectory. 80 81III. INSTALLING THE METAMAIL BINARIES 82 83The easiest way to build the system is "make install-all". This should 84install everything except the mailcap file in a reasonable place if you've 85set the INSTROOT variable to point where you want the installation to be done. 86 87For convenience, the make process installs SYMBOLIC 88LINKS to all the needed binaries (or copies, in the case of shell 89scripts) in the top-level "bin" directory, and man entries in the 90top-level "man" directory. 91 92IV. YOUR MAILCAP FILE 93 94You'll also need to install a mailcap file. A prototype mailcap file is 95included in the top level directory, but you might want to modify it 96(see metamail.1 for details about mailcap files). 97 98By default, the mailcap file should be installed in either /etc or 99/usr/etc/ or /usr/local/etc. However, you can easily 100change this default location in the metamail source code. 101(This code is found in metamail/metamail.c.) 102 103The Makefile is set up so that "make install-all" will install the prototype 104mailcap file in $INSTROOT/etc, but this is unlikely to be both the ideal 105makefile and the ideal location at many sites. 106 107For testing purposes, on UNIX, you can install the mailcap file in your home 108directory under the name ".mailcap". 109 110If you have acquired the version of the metamail distribution that includes 111the Bellcore "ATOMICMAIL" software, you should uncomment the appropriate 112line in the prototype mailcap file in order to make it work. 113 114V. MODIFYING YOUR MAIL-READING PROGRAMS 115 116The hardest part of metamail installation, by far, is the modification of 117your local mail-reading programs to make them use metamail for non-text 118mail. This has been done for over a dozen of the most commonly-used 119UNIX mail reading programs. An explanation of how to modify these mail 120readers can be found (in various formats) in the file(s) mailers.txt. 121 122Once you have installed all the binaries AND the modified versions of 123the mail-reading programs, you should have a very extensible multimedia 124mail system installed at your site. Metamail and related software are 125discussed on the INFO-METAMAIL mailing list. If you want to sign up for this 126mailing list, send mail to info-metamail-request@thumper.bellcore.com. 127If you do not wish to join the mailing list, but you DO want to know about 128future releases of metamail, please send mail indicating this interest to 129Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@bellcore.com> 130 131VI. The "fonts" directory. 132 133The fonts directory contains software for non-ASCII mail. It initially only 134supports ISO-8859-8 (Hebrew) and an alias for a fairly common Adobe 135font that supports ISO-8859-1 (W. Europe), but also provides a template for 136how other character sets can be supported, given the right fonts. NOTE THAT 137 IF YOU DO NOT USE X11 THE "fonts" DIRECTORY IS USELESS, AND 138THAT IF YOU DO NOT HAVE "bdftosnf" INSTALLED THE BUILD 139MAY FAIL IN THE FONTS DIRECTORY. FOR NON-X SITES, IF 140YOU GET RID OF ANY REFERENCE TO IT IN THE TOP LEVEL 141MAKEFILE, IT WILL NEVER GET IN YOUR WAY. 142 143Note also that the "fonts" directory builds but does not install the snf, 144fonts.alias, and fonts.dir files. It builds a fe scripts that make 145reference the build directory. If you are installing things elsewhere, 146you will need to change the path reference in the "*.source" scripts 147(the MYFONTDIR variable) if you want non-ASCII mail to work properly. 148 149VII. FUTURE VERSIONS OF METAMAIL 150 151The metamail software is being given away freely by Bellcore in the 152interest of promoting a wide user community for the emerging 153Interent standards for multimedia mail. The metamail software is by 154no means a finished product, nor is it as polished as software 155produced for commercial purposes. It is our hope that users will 156be tolerant of any warts they may find, and will contribute their 157own improvements, via the INFO-METAMAIL mailing list, for incorporation 158into future releases of the metamail software. 159 160VIII. TESTING METAMAIL & MIME SUPPORT 161 162If you want a set of test messages in MIME format, exercising various 163features of mtamail and MIME, you may ftp them from thumper.bellcore.com, 164where there is a directory called "pub/nsb/samples". Each file in 165that directory is a separate MIME-compliant message which should 166do something interesting if viewed with a metamail-modified mail-reader. 167 168IX. FURTHER DOCUMENTATION 169 170Drafts of the MIME and mailcap documents are available in the 171pub/nsb directory on thumper.bellcore.com. Other documents may also 172become available from time to time in that directory -- feel free to 173browse. 174 175The anonymous ftp directory from thumper is mirrored for the 176Scandinavian countries on ftp.funet.fi, where it can be found in 177 /pub/unix/mail/metamail/- 178