How to View BINHEX Messages
As of Athena version 8.3 and NMH, commands like "show" will
automatically read mail containing binhex'ed files, and attempt to
display it as best it can. Of course, if someone sends you a
powerpoint file, nothing on athena is going to be able to read it,
regardless of how automatically it gets decrypted.
To decrypt and save a binhex-attached document, you can run
mhstore ##
which will save the output as files and tell you where it has put each
part.
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On machines running 8.2 and earlier versions, users can decode binhex
files by typing:
add consult
xbin ~/Mail/inbox/###
where ### is the mail message number.
Three files will be produced, all beginning with the same string.
The filenames will end in .rsrc, .info, and .data. The file you want
to keep and look at is the one ending in .data; you can safely erase
the other two files which were created.
The .data file is probably a binary file of some sort, and you should
use the appropriate program to read it (MS Word if it's a Word file; a
graphics program if it is an image file in GIF or JPG format, and so on).
If you don't know what sort of file it is, you can sometimes get a
clue by opening it in emacs and paging through it, looking for strings
like "Created in WordPerfect 6.0." Also, the "file" command in the
sipb locker can be helpful in identifying a particular sort of binary;
add -f sipb
file filename
will make sure you run the version of file in the SIPB locker.
If you don't have the appropriate software on a PC or a Mac, the
following guidelines may help you view your file on Athena:
1) If it's a graphics file, you should be able to view it
with xv:
add graphics; xv filename.data
2) If it's a Microsoft Word file, version 6.0 or below,
you can read it with FrameMaker:
add frame; maker filename.data
If it's a WordPerfect file, you can try converting
to an intermediate FrameMaker format using the
"wptomif" program in the frame locker:
add frame; wptomif filename.data
3) Finally, the Applixware suite (in the "applix" locker,
and only available for the Sun at this time) has the
ability to read and print a variety of file formats,
but is known to be flaky and crash-prone:
add applix; applix &
There is another program you can try using called `mcvert' in the sipb
locker. To decode BinHex 4.0 files with mcvert type
add sipb
mcvert ~/Mail/inbox/###
where ### is the mail message number. For more information type the
following after adding the sipb locker:
man mcvert
If you are a BinHex 4.0 fan, you may find the following file interesting
to read (it's about a program called mcread):
attach sipb
more /mit/sipb/doc/mcread/mcREADME
Last Updated: 8-19-97
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