PMDF System Manager's Guide

Most PMDF messages are stored as text files. Multimedia mail support for various sorts of binary information, such as OpenVMS binary files, compound documents, and image data are supported via printable text encodings. Messages with multiple parts (possibly containing different types of data) are represented as a series of text sections separated by special unique delimiter strings.

A sample mail message file is given in Figure 1-1 below.

Figure 1-1 Sample Mail Message File

u;MIRANDA c;l s;EXAMPLE.COM i;01G6YTYFU6748WWH0Y@EXAMPLE.COM h;<01G6YTYFU6748WWH0Y@EXAMPLE.COM> m;MIRANDA@EXAMPLE.COM (1) j;rfc822 f;prospero@EXAMPLE.COM prospero@ISLAND.EXAMPLE.COM Boundary_(ID_bNmDRTvfQNkeUUBbOugFTQ) (2) Received: from EXAMPLE.COM by EXAMPLE.COM (PMDF V6.1 #9441) (3) id <01G6YTYFU6748WWH0Y@EXAMPLE.COM> for prospero@EXAMPLE.COM; Fri, 15 Nov 2012 14:55:51 EDT Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2012 14:55:48 -0500 (EDT) From: "Miranda" <miranda@example.COM> Subject: Woe the day To: prospero@example.COM Message-id: <01G6YTYFU6748WWH0Y@example.COM> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Envelope-to: prospero@example.COM X-VMS-To: IN%"prospero@example.com" (4) Prospero, More to know Did never meddle with my thoughts. Miranda Boundary_(ID_bNmDRTvfQNkeUUBbOugFTQ) (5)

Briefly, the key items in each message file are

1. The message envelope. The first records in the file contain message envelope (i.e., transport) information.
2. The envelope is terminated either by a line containing a boundary marker, or by a line containing two CTRL/A characters.
3. The header lines of the message follow the envelope; their format is mandated by RFC 822. ^a
4. There can be any number of message header lines; the message header formed by this collection of header lines is terminated by a single blank line after which follows the message body.
5. The message is terminated by a boundary marker matching the boundary marker at the beginning of the message, (or by a sequence of five CTRL/As if the message start was indicated using CTRL/As).

Process Software reserves the right to change this format in future releases of PMDF. User-written applications that either read or write queued PMDF message files should make use of appropriate PMDF library routines; see the PMDF Programmer's Reference Manual. Use of the PMDF API will insulate user applications from any future message format changes.