On Mon, 26 Jan 2015, Mike Luther wrote to Mark Lewis:

 ml>  MikeL> Can anyone here suggest what tool in OS/2 can 
 ml> handle base64 Email 
 ml>  MikeL> message work? 

 ml> in what manner? just reading as a client or processing 
 ml> into text for posting to a FTN message base?

 MikeL> issues.  The test work is working fine now.  However, the 
 MikeL> standard Panda Email that comes forward to 'register' the 2015 
 MikeL> product appears to be bound to what is 'base64' code which 
 MikeL> contains data the operator is supposed to read and work with to 
 MikeL> use.  But I can't 'visualize' that in OS/2.

ok, so what you are after is, in simple terms, a mime or base64 decoder...

TBH, your email reader should be able to do this by default out of the
box... that is, if you are using a ""traditional""
email reader... text based or GUI... my pine and alpine stuff can as well
as a few other text based ones i've messed with (on *nix)... there may be a
setting for this in whatever it is that you use... but maybe not and
especially not if you are using FTN software to read your emails...

so that takes us to three options...

O1. feed that base64 data block into an online web-based decoder.
O2. feed that base64 data block to a local decoder tool.
O3. feed that email/base64 block to a self-written tool of your own design.

S1. there are several web sites available that you can use... sometimes i
have to try a couple before i find one that works because the block may not
conform exactly to what they expect. uncle google points me the way most of
the time.

S2. i found, somewhere, a UUDEVIEW/UUENVIEW set of tools written by frank
pilhofer that i have used to decode mimed schtuff in emails... the date on
the stuff i have appears to be in 1996... UUDEVIEW has worked for me on
numerous items but some things it did not like... especially working with
mime stuff where the headers containing the neccesary ingrediants must be
available and they weren't always like it expected in the files i was
feeding it...

S3. i wrote a tool using free pascal that decodes mime stuffs and even goes
so far as to replace html entities with their CP437 counterparts

  eg: © -> (c)

i used a library called synapse... mainly for several reasons... one being
that i was going to need it for another application that had to access
https servers and execute REST queries for data retrieval... the currently
operating application though, runs as a ""filter"" to
my FTNinternet mail and news gateway... it processes emails
addressed to certain addresses and formats them for posting in fidonet
echomail areas... if you are a pascal coder, you might do similar and
create your own local decoder that operates how you need it to with the
email data you feed it...


those are the three options i can think of right off hand... at least one
of them will help you solve your problem... well, there's four, actually,
if your email reader can decode it on the fly for you...

FWIW: even plain html is being sent as base64 encoded data blocks these
days... not only binary pictures or registration keys or similar... being
able to decode base64 data is a must in today's world...

FWIW2: i don't think that this is wed to microsoft's mess in the least... i
think a lot of it has to do with lazy coders and having to use this neat
trick or that one for the most simple of operations ;)

HTH

)\/(ark