BTW, why did you start in email but continue here?

-=> Miles Maxted wrote to William McBrine <=-

 MM> I did upgrade PKZIP to version 250 as suggested and tested things out -
 MM> it peeked into and unpacked the QWKs mmanually without hassle.

I bet you didn't test it the way it's called from MultiMail, which is with
the full path to the packet. I just tried that with PKZIP 2.50 for DOS
under both Win 98 SE and Win XP. Although PKZIP 2.50 purports to support
long file names, it only did so under 98 -- not XP. (Actually, I was
surprised to notice that MultiMail/DOS supported LFNs under XP. It doesn't
under NT, though it does under 9x.) You never mentioned what OS you were
using -- and it makes a BIG difference as regards long file names -- but
based on this experiment and your report, I'm guessing it was XP. No?

Anyway, this is why I said "possibly" PKZIP 2.50; I hadn't thoroughly
tested that configuration. However, InfoZip (as I also suggested, without
qualification) -- at least the Win32 version -- definitely works.

If you had used the Win32 version of MultiMail -- even calling PKZIP for
DOS -- you wouldn't have had the problem. Interestingly, MultiMail/XT also
would've worked. But the "DOS" (DJGPP) version, even when seeing
the "short
form" of the name in the MMAIL.RC, expands it when calling the archiver.
(I'm not quite sure why, yet. It's something that happens in the system
libraries; all this is largely transparent to MultiMail proper.)

Generally, under Windows NT/2000/XP, you'd be better off with the Win32
version of MultiMail anyway. Under 9x it's a toss-up.

 MM> I also changed all the "**\multimail\**" entries in MMAIL.RC to
 MM> "\**\multim~1\**\" - again without effect.

(See above. In MultiMail/DOS, it gets re-expanded anyway.)

 MM> OK, so I seem to have found a weak link in mminstallation procedures;
 MM> add to your excellent installation manual the instruction "Do NOT
 MM> attempt to install MM in a directory called MULTIMAIL !".

This is really a PKZIP issue, not a MultiMail issue. And, sorry, but since
you started with 2.04g -- a DOS program that predates Win 95 by a couple of
years -- I think you should've anticipated that _it_ wouldn't support long
file names.

As always, I recommend InfoZip. The default settings in MultiMail/DOS are
for PKZIP, for the convenience of the greatest number of users; but InfoZip
is better. And if you're running under Windows, then again, I recommend
using native Win32 software where possible, rather than DOS programs.   

 MM> I got mad and started from scratch - using a MMAIL directory

As I suggested in the first place. ;-)

 MM> Sorry to have alarmed you unnecessarily,

Don't worry; I wasn't alarmed. :-) In fact, it was interesting, because I
discovered a few nuances of LFNs that I hadn't been aware of.

... Linux, the choice of a GNU generation.
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.45