We used four different MUAs to create the messages. You can determine which
MUA was used by looking at the file name. The breakdown is:

m0*.txt -- Microsoft Outlook 00
m1*.txt -- Netscape Communicator 4.7
m2*.txt -- Qualcomm Eudora 4.2
m3*.txt -- PINE (Linux)

You can also look at the headers of the message to determine the MUA.

If you want to contribute to this collection of samples, please do send
your contributions. We will evaluate the contributions for inclusion in
this collection. Please submit exmaples to examples@hunnysoft.com.
The evaluation criteria will include:

* Is the MUA a mainstream MUA (not some obscure, rare MUA)?

* Are the messages short?

* Are the messages useful for testing?

* Are the messages genuine?

Messages that have been through a relaying
SMTP server might have been modified. This might not disqualify a
sample message, as it probably still has value for interoperability
testing.

When you send messages, please zip them or tar them, so that they won't be
changed as they pass through the mail system. If I include your messages,
we will put your name on a list of contributors, unless you prefer otherwise.

We are also considering creating a separate collection of messages designed
to stress test MIME implementations. So, if you have any good examples of
bad messages (but not bad examples of good messages :-), feel free to send
them.

Not all the messages are correct to the MIME standard. However, since
these messages are from popular MUAs, they can be useful for
interoperability testing. Please, if you are creating messages, read and
understand the standards documents, rather than imitate what you see in
these messages!

We have included the files that were used for creating the attachments,
so you can test that you have successfully decoded the attachments.

We have also included a simple Java program that we used for creating these
samples. This program, SmtpServer.java, is a simple SMTP server that will
receive the message directly from you MUA. This is important, because if
you just route the message through your normal SMTP server, the server
might make changes to the message. For example, it seems to be common for
some servers to convert quoted-printable encoded text to 8-bit text.[1]
This SMTP server program records the entire SMTP client/server dialog,
which is great if you are trying to debug your mail system, but it also
means that you will have to edit the output of the program to get just
the email message.

The URL for this collection of messages is:
<http://www.hunnysoft.com/mime/samples/samples.zip>

----------------------------------------------------

[1] We don't like the fact that this happens, but that's life. Our thinking is that the
MTA thinks that since it can handle 8-bit text, that quoted-printable
encoding is not necessary. However, quoted-printable also makes long lines
into short lines, which is something other than converting to 8-bit
characters. In general, I think end-to-end transparency is a good thing;
anything that interferes with transparency should be avoided.

Below you will find a listing of our test messages:

m0001.txt m0002.txt m0003.txt m0004.txt m0005.txt m0006.txt m0007.txt m0008.txt m0009.txt m0010.txt m0011.txt m0012.txt m0013.txt m0014.txt m0015.txt m0016.txt m0017.txt m0018.txt m1001.txt m1002.txt m1003.txt m1004.txt m1005.txt m1006.txt m1007.txt m1008.txt m1009.txt m1010.txt m1011.txt m1012.txt m1013.txt m1014.txt m1015.txt m1016.txt m2001.txt m2002.txt m2003.txt m2004.txt m2005.txt m2006.txt m2007.txt m2008.txt m2009.txt m2010.txt m2011.txt m2012.txt m2013.txt m2014.txt m2015.txt m2016.txt m3001.txt m3002.txt m3003.txt m3004.txt