PMDF System Manager's Guide


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Chapter 6
Character Set Conversions and Message Reformatting

6.1 CHARSET-CONVERSION Mapping Table

One very basic mapping table in PMDF is the character set conversion table. The name of this table is CHARSET-CONVERSION. It is used to specify what sorts of channel-to-channel character set conversions, labelling conversions, and message reformatting should be done.

On many systems there is no need to do character set conversions or message reformating and therefore this table is not needed. Situations arise, however, where character conversions must be done. For example, sites running Japanese OpenVMS may need to convert between DEC Kanji and the ISO-2022 Kanji currently used on the Internet. Another possible use of conversions arises when multinational characters are so heavily used that the slight discrepancies between the DEC Multinational Character Set (DEC-MCS) and the ISO-8859-1 character set specified for use in MIME may become an issue, and actual conversion between the two may therefore be needed.

The CHARSET-CONVERSION mapping can also be used to alter the format of messages. Facilities are provided to convert a number of non-MIME formats into MIME. Changes to MIME encodings and structure are also possible. These options are used when messages are being relayed to systems that only support MIME or some subset of MIME. And finally, conversion from MIME into non-MIME formats is provided in a small number of cases.

PMDF will probe the CHARSET-CONVERSION mapping table in two different ways. The first probe is used to determine whether or not PMDF should reformat the message and if so, what formatting options should be used. (If no reformatting is specified PMDF does not bother to check for specific character set conversions.) The input string for this first probe has the general form:


IN-CHAN=in-channel;OUT-CHAN=out-channel;CONVERT 
Here in-channel is the name of the source channel (where the message comes from) and out-channel is the name of the destination channel (where the message is going). If a match occurs the resulting string should be a comma-separated list of keywords. Table 6-1 lists the available keywords.

Note

Make sure that there is no whitespace in the resulting string, for example around commas or equal signs.

Table 6-1 CHARSET-CONVERSIONS Mapping Table Keywords
Keyword Action
Always Force conversion even when conversion channel is an intermediate destination
Appledouble Convert other MacMIME formats to Appledouble format
Applesingle Convert other MacMIME formats to Applesingle format
BASE64 Switch MIME encodings to BASE64
Binhex Convert other MacMIME formats, or parts including Macintosh type and Mac creator information, to Binhex format
Block Extract just the data fork from MacMIME format parts
Bottom "Flatten" any message/rfc822 body part (forwarded message) into a message content part and a header part
Delete "Flatten" any message/rfc822 body part (forwarded message) into a message content part, deleting the forwarded headers
Level Remove redundant multipart levels from message
Macbinary Convert other MacMIME formats, or parts including Macintosh type and Macintosh creator information, to Macbinary format
No Disable conversion
Pathworks Convert message to Pathworks Mail format
QUOTED-PRINTABLE Switch MIME encodings to QUOTED-PRINTABLE
Record,Text Line wrap text/plain parts at 80 characters
Record,Text= n Line wrap text/plain parts at n characters
RFC1154 Convert message to RFC 1154 format
Top "Flatten" any message/rfc822 body part (forwarded message) into a header part and a message content part
UUENCODE Switch MIME encodings to X-UUENCODE
Yes Enable conversion
A No is assumed if no match occurs.


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