Brian, et al --
...and then Brian Salter-Duke said...
% On Thu, Jul 22, 1999 at 06:52:55AM -0400, David Thorburn-Gundlach wrote:
% >
% > ...and then Alex Lane said...
% > % What can I do to automatically convert encoded attachments
% > % into files? In particular, many people send me MS Word files, and
% >
...
% > and have your mailcap entry look like
% >
% > application/msword; /path/to/that/script < '%s';
% >
% I do not see where this gets you beyond saving directly from the
% attachment window. Am I being thick?
Hmmm... Probably not; I didn't even think of saving from the
attachment window -- and, since I don't know much about it, can't say
if it's what Alex would want.
One advantage of such a script is automatic pathing to your save
directory, but that shouldn't be so tough after all...
%
% > % my Windoze box.
% >
% > Eewwww... I do see your point, but it just seems, well, so *icky* ;-)
% >
%
% Well, Yes, it is so *icky* but we live in the real world and lots of
% people at my university think things can only be written on computers
Yeah. Silly them.
I must admit, the hair on the back of my neck goes up at the use of
the term "real world". The real world as I see it doesn't have
anything to do with computers anyway :-) but at least doesn't have to
include Windoze. While I was being -- or trying to be! -- funny by
using "icky", it was also only half jesting.
So, if you have dorks who only understand a GUI and want their
capitalization auto-corrected for them, let 'em. We can get around
their marginal level of ability.
% in Word. My current method is:-
%
% 1. In the pager, use catdoc. This is sufficient to recognise that 90%
% of the mail I receive with Word attachments are rubbish and can be
% trashed.
Gee, I thought that there would be a "* application/msword" recipe
that automatically dumped the mail in the trash ;-)
%
% 2. In the attachment menu send the file to a dummy script that basically
% says "Hit enter to continue:" and waits until you do. While it waits the
% file is in /tmp. I run samba and have the tmp share open on the PC in
% a window. Pull down view menu in this window to refresh. You now see
% a MSWord icon for the file. Double click and MS Word comes up. Great.
Not bad; that's probably the equivalent of what Alex wants to do.
And, as I see you say, you can use a script to do your handy pathing
as well as clean up later.
%
% The trouble is:-
%
% 3. On a Dec Alpha this works fine and the file is loaded into Word. On
% a IBM RS6000, it just says it can not open the file. I have no idea why.
% However, you can move the icon to the desk top and open it from there.
% You then have to move the icon later to trash. The same thing happens with
% Excel files but rtf files work fine opening in Word.
I saw this go by last time and have no idea. Best of luck, though...
%
% Anyone got a better method? There is open.pl and docserver.exe on several
% mutt web pages but I can not get them to work.
Have you seen StarOffice? The folks at Star Division (www.stardiv.com)
have ports for Linux x86, Solaris SPARC and x86, and 95/98/NT x86 freely
available to non-commercial users, and v5.1 reads and writes Office97
versions as well as everything lower than that... That would let you
do any MSOffice stuff you need right on an available platform -- like
a Linux box that you might have hanging around, for instance...
%
% Cheers, Brian.
%
% --
% Associate Professor Brian Salter-Duke (Brian Duke)
% Chemistry, Faculty of Science, IT and Education, Northern Territory University,
% Darwin, NT 0909, Australia. Phone 08-89466702. Fax 08-89466847
% [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.smps.ntu.edu.au/chemistry/compchem.html
:-D
--
David Thorburn-Gundlach * It's easier to fight for one's principles
(play) [EMAIL PROTECTED] * than to live up to them. -- fortune cookie
(work) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Helping out at Pfizer
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