Specify the file encoding to use.

Syntax

ENCODING encoding

Parameters

encoding

Required parameter specifying the file encoding to use. The available encodings are: 8BIT, 7BIT, BASE32, BASE64, CBASE64 (gzip compressed BASE64), BASE85, BINHEX (encoding only, not the BINHEX file format), BTOA, HEXADECIMAL, PATHWORKS, QUOTED_PRINTABLE, UUENCODE, and CUUENCODE (gzip compressed UUENCODE).

Description

Binary files cannot be transmitted directly as electronic mail; they must first be encoded into a "printable" format. This, of course, means that they must be decoded upon receipt. The ENCODING command is used to specify the encoding to be applied to files requested with the SEND command. When selecting an encoding, be sure to select an encoding which you can decode. If your mail is handled by PMDF, then you can decode any of the encodings offered by PMDF mail servers.

The encoding specified with the ENCODING command applies to all subsequent SEND commands in the same message. It may be overridden with a subsequent ENCODING command or, on a per command, basis with the SEND command's /ENCODING qualifier. And, of course, encodings established in previous messages sent to the server have no effect on subsequent messages which you might send.

The BASE64 and QUOTED_PRINTABLE encodings are described in RFC 2045 (MIME, Part One). The HEXADECIMAL encoding is a simple hexadecimal encoding of the data. The data is encoded in 8 bit byte order. Each 8 bit byte is represented with two characters; the first character describes the high four bits and the second describes the low four bits. The uuencode encoding is compatible with the popular uuencode and uudecode utilities.

BASE64 is usually the best encoding to use: it is most likely to survive any mangling that might occur as the mail message works its way through the networks to you (e.g., line wrapping, character set translation, space stripping, etc.).

Examples

The commands,

ENCODING BASE64 MODE BLOCK SEND gif/boats*.gif SEND/MODE=TEXT gif/index.txt

set the default encoding to BASE64 and the default file reading mode to BLOCK. Any files matching the specification gif/boats*.gif will be sent using these defaults. However, the file gif/index.txt will be sent as an ordinary text file owing to the use of the /MODE=TEXT qualifier.

Error Messages

%MAILSERV-W-INSFPRM, missing command parameters 
      

You failed to supply the name of the encoding to use. Resend the command with a valid encoding name specified.

%MAILSERV-W-IVKEYW, unrecognized keyword - check validity and spelling 
      

You specified an unknown encoding. Resend the command with a valid encoding name specified.