Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!gatech!hao!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!GREMLIN.NRTC.NORTHROP.COM!mrose From: mrose@GREMLIN.NRTC.NORTHROP.COM (Marshall Rose) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: SMTP question Message-ID: <12639.554047863@gremlin.nrtc.northrop.com> Date: Thu, 23-Jul-87 12:41:46 EDT Article-I.D.: gremlin.12639.554047863 Posted: Thu Jul 23 12:41:46 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jul-87 07:36:31 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 19 I don't know what the "official" word is, but SMTP is designed for moving ascii messages. Although the gurus will probably tell you otherwise, SMTP is very dependent on rfc822, which defines the format of text messages. This probably isn't the fault of SMTP, since all of the mailers which use SMTP also depend on rfc822 or rfc822-like formats being used. If you want to use SMTP to move arbitrary octets in messages, then on UNIX, using something like atob and btoa. btoa takes a "binary" stream (8-bit bytes) and explodes it into a 7-bit data path with line breaks at column 78 (or something like that); atob performs the inverse operation. I'm sure other systems have similar programs. Alternately, find someone running X.400 in the Internet and just use X.400. Of course, it's probably going to be another three years before X.400 mailers will have the reach of SMTP mailers. /mtr