The mimify module defines two functions to convert mail messages to
and from MIME format. The mail message can be either a simple message
or a so-called multipart message. Each part is treated separately.
Mimifying (a part of) a message entails encoding the message as
quoted-printable if it contains any characters that cannot be
represented using 7-bit ASCII. Unmimifying (a part of) a message
entails undoing the quoted-printable encoding. Mimify and unmimify
are especially useful when a message has to be edited before being
sent. Typical use would be:
unmimify message
edit message
mimify message
send message
The modules defines the following user-callable functions and
user-settable variables:
- mimify (infile, outfile)
-
Copy the message in infile to outfile, converting parts to
quoted-printable and adding MIME mail headers when necessary.
infile and outfile can be file objects (actually, any
object that has a readline() method (for infile) or a
write() method (for outfile)) or strings naming the files.
If infile and outfile are both strings, they may have the
same value.
- unmimify (infile, outfile[, decode_base64])
-
Copy the message in infile to outfile, decoding all
quoted-printable parts. infile and outfile can be file
objects (actually, any object that has a readline() method (for
infile) or a write() method (for outfile)) or strings
naming the files. If infile and outfile are both strings,
they may have the same value.
If the decode_base64 argument is provided and tests true, any
parts that are coded in the base64 encoding are decoded as well.
- mime_decode_header (line)
-
Return a decoded version of the encoded header line in line.
- mime_encode_header (line)
-
Return a MIME-encoded version of the header line in line.
- MAXLEN
-
By default, a part will be encoded as quoted-printable when it
contains any non-ASCII characters (i.e., characters with the 8th bit
set), or if there are any lines longer than MAXLEN characters
(default value 200).
- CHARSET
-
When not specified in the mail headers, a character set must be filled
in. The string used is stored in CHARSET, and the default
value is ISO-8859-1 (also known as Latin1 (latin-one)).
This module can also be used from the command line. Usage is as
follows:
mimify.py -e [-l length] [infile [outfile]]
mimify.py -d [-b] [infile [outfile]]
to encode (mimify) and decode (unmimify) respectively. infile
defaults to standard input, outfile defaults to standard output.
The same file can be specified for input and output.
If the -l option is given when encoding, if there are any lines
longer than the specified length, the containing part will be
encoded.
If the -b option is given when decoding, any base64 parts will
be decoded as well.
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