UUENVIEW(1)



UUENVIEW(1)                 General Commands Manual                UUENVIEW(1)

NAME
       uuenview - a powerful encoder for binary files

SYNOPSIS
       uuenview [options] file(s)

DESCRIPTION
       uuenview  encodes  a  binary  file  into  ASCII  text  for sending over
       non-8-bit electronic data channels, such  as  electronic  mail  or  the
       usenet.   uuenview is a superset of and fully backwards compatible with
       the standard uuencode(1) command, featuring more comfort and more flex-
       ibility.

       Files encoded with uuenview are compatible with virtually all decoders,
       as long as the encoding method (see below) is supported by  the  remote
       side. If the remote side uses uudeview(1), there shouldn't be any prob-
       lems at all.

       If properly configured, uuenview can directly  send  encoded  files  by
       email  or  to the usenet. These messages are wrapped into a proper MIME
       envelope, which is handy if the recipient uses MIME-compliant  mail  or
       news software.

OPTIONS
   ENCODING SELECTION
       -b     Chooses  the  Base64  encoding  method  as specified by the MIME
              standard.

       -u     Chooses the uuencoding  method,  for  compatibility  with  uuen-
              code(1).

       -y     Chooses the yEncoding method.

       -x     Chooses the now obsolete xxencoding method.

       -t     Sends the file(s) as plain text.

       -q     Encodes the file(s) using quoted printable encoding.

       These  options  are positional and affect the encoding of all remaining
       files on the command line until changed.

       When sending, posting or attaching files, the default is to use Base64,
       resulting in MIME compliant messages. Otherwise, when encoding to stan-
       dard output or into a file, the default is to use uuencoding.

   TARGETS
       -o     Specifies that output shall be written into files.  These  files
              will have the same base name as the source file and an extension
              of .001, .002 etc, depending on the number of parts required  by
              the  -lines option. The encoded files are written to the current
              directory.

       -od path
              Same as '-o', but the encoded files are written to the given di-
              rectory instead.

       -m email
              Mails the encoded file(s), each one probably split into multiple
              parts, to the given email address. Multiple  recipients  can  be
              given  as  a quoted, comma-separated list. On Unix systems, mail
              is usually piped to sendmail(8).

       -p newsgroup
              Posts the encoded file(s), each one probably split into multiple
              parts,  to the given newsgroup. Multiple newsgroups can be given
              as a quoted, comma-separated list. The inews(1) program  is  in-
              voked  for  posting. You may have to set the NNTPSERVER environ-
              ment variable to your news server.

       -a     Attaches files. This feature is expected to be used  from  shell
              scripts  and  the  like.  In attach mode, a message is read from
              standard input, complete with headers. The files  given  on  the
              command  line  are then "attached" to the message, which is con-
              verted, if necessary, to a proper MIME multipart format. The  -a
              option  can  be combined with -m or -p in order to directly mail
              or post the result. Else, the  message,  complete  with  attach-
              ments, is written to standard output.

              Uudeview  is  using  a heuristic to determine where the provided
              message headers end and the message body starts.  If  the  first
              line  does  not  start  with  either From or some non-whitespace
              characters  followed  by  a  colon  (e.g.   "X-header-blah:"  or
              "Patch#1:") uuenview interprets the whole input as message body.
              Else anything before the first  empty  line  is  interpreted  as
              headers  and  the rest of the provided input is taken as message
              body.

       If no target option is given, the encoded data is printed  to  standard
       output.

   HEADERS
       When  mailing or posting a file, it is possible to set certain headers.
       Be careful to quote parameters that consist of more than one word.

       -s subject
              Set the Subject: header line. The file name and part number  are
              automatically  appended.  Without this, a default subject header
              is generated.

       -f from
              Set the From: header line.

       -r reply
              Set the Reply-To: header line.

   OTHER
       -v     Verbosely prints everything the program's trying to do.

       -lines Substituting lines with a number, sets the maximum number of en-
              coded  lines  per  part. The encoded data is automatically split
              into as many parts as required. Line counts less  than  200  are
              ignored.  The  uuencoding and xxencoding methods encode 45k, and
              Base64 encodes 57k of data in 1000 lines. If this option is  not
              specified, the default is unlimited lines per part, resulting in
              exactly one part.

       file(s)
              One or more filenames to be processed. To encode a file from the
              standard  input,  use a single hyphen '-' and give a filename to
              be used for the encoded file as the next parameter.

       Options may also be set in the $UUENVIEW environment variable, which is
       read before processing the options on the command line.

NOTES
       Files  read  from standard input can only be used once, meaning that at
       most one target option may be given.

       Output written to standard output cannot be split into multiple  parts.
       In this case, the -lines option is ignored.

       uuenview  must  be  correctly  configured  at compile time in order for
       mailing and posting to work. If it doesn't, consult your system  admin-
       istrator.   The  program  used for posting a file can be set at runtime
       using the INEWS environment variable. This setting overrides  the  com-
       pile-time configuration.

       Base64  is not MIME. Base64 is the encoding specified by the MIME stan-
       dard, but in order for a message to become a  proper  MIME  message,  a
       number  of  headers are required.  uuenview produces these headers when
       mailing or posting, but not when writing to a file. In this case, uuen-
       view  does not have any control over the headers. If you include Base64
       output into your messages, they are not MIME-compliant!

       If you rename, copy or link the program to uuencode, it may  act  as  a
       smart  replacement  for  the  standard, accepting the same command-line
       syntax. This has not been well-tested yet.

EXAMPLES
       uuenview -m 'root,fred@somewhere.com' uudeview.tgz
              Encodes the file uudeview.tgz and mails it to  both  your  local
              system  administrator  and  to your friend Fred at the Somewhere
              company.

       If you give more than one filename on the command line,  each  file  is
       usually handled separately. A workaround is to send them all as attach-
       ment to a single (or empty) mail:

       uuenview -m root -b -a file1 file2 < /dev/null
              Creates an empty mail and attaches the two given files,  encoded
              in  Base64  format, and mails the result to your system adminis-
              trator.

SEE ALSO
       uudeview(1), uuencode(1), uudecode(1), sendmail(8), inews(1).
       The uudeview homepage on the Web,
       http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview/

BUGS
       The program does not detect error conditions when mailing or posting.

       Attaching only works reliably if certain headers of the  input  message
       (for example Content-Type) are not folded and shorter than 1024 charac-
       ters.

       It is not possible to encode into BinHex.

       The program will quite likely fail to handle binary data as  input  for
       plain  text or quoted-printable attachments. On plain text attachments,
       the line length (must be less than 998 characters according to MIME) is
       not enforced.

       It  is  not  possible  to set the "charset" value of plain text attach-
       ments.

       It is not possible to set the content type value of attachments.

       sendmail(8) stops reading upon a line consisting only of a single  dot.
       uudeview  does not check plain text input files against this condition.
       (The problem is worked around when using quoted-printable, and does not
       exist with the other encodings.)

                                   June 2001                       UUENVIEW(1)

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