[SML] [CudaMailTagged] Re: Phone

[Bryan Manternach]

On 4/2/15 7:54 AM, Jerry Durand via Stagecraft wrote:
> For pictures I take with the phone Bluetooth works fine, along with just
> plugging in and reading it as mass storage.  But with the photos that
> came in by mms they don't appear as photos in any directory on the phone
> or SD card.  I think I found the messages, they're in a binary format
> which I presume is how they come in from the server.  Of course I can't
> read that format.
eMail was never designed to send binary data, so it has to beconverted 
to text.

When attached to mail images are converted from their binary (GIF JPG 
whatever)
to text , and attached as text using a MIME (Multimedia Internet Mail 
Extension)
format.  Then when you "detach" the atachment image it is decoded back into
it's original binary file format.

If for some reason, you detach just the text blob, it'll be jsut that, a 
blob of
gibberish text on the disk.  But most mail readers on phones these days are
pretty good about detaching their MIME attachments back to original format
as long as it is some standard well known often used format.

You only really run into problems when people start messing with file name
extensions, like calling .jpg files ".jpeg" or stuff like that, and 
.jpeg may be a
valid MIME type on the sending end, but the recieving end may not know what
a .jpeg is.  Sometimes simply changing the extension fixes the problem 
as I have
seen perfectly good decodes of binaries (images or whatever) where the
file name decided verbatum, whether it was right or wrong.  so check the
extension and if it looks off, try fixing it before you give up. 
especially if the
sender added something after it.  things like "filename.gif.thumbnail" 
might not
open until you remove the ".thumbnail" portion. while the file itself is 
otherwise
just dandy.

-s