POP3 relay service with MIME transformation?

We are using an application that has problems processing HTML emails
that have a single text/html part as content-type.
Somehow emails with content-type multipart/alternative with both
text/plain and text/html mime sections are processed fine.

Is there a (simple) pop3 server/relay program that anybody knows of
that could translate a single text/html into a multipart email? The
actual content of the text/plain is not important.

Platform may be either windows or Linux.

Thanks,

Joop

Re: POP3 relay service with MIME transformation?

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Joop writes:

> We are using an application that has problems processing HTML emails
> that have a single text/html part as content-type.
> Somehow emails with content-type multipart/alternative with both
> text/plain and text/html mime sections are processed fine.
>
> Is there a (simple) pop3 server/relay program that anybody knows of
> that could translate a single text/html into a multipart email? The
> actual content of the text/plain is not important.

I doubt it. In the last eight years I have never heard of anyone asking for
anything like that. Your need is rather unique.

The correct solution, in your case, is to fix the broken application,
instead of searching for a smelly band-aid workaround.



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Re: POP3 relay service with MIME transformation?

Sam wrote:

>Joop writes:
>
>> We are using an application that has problems processing HTML emails
>> that have a single text/html part as content-type.
>> Somehow emails with content-type multipart/alternative with both
>> text/plain and text/html mime sections are processed fine.
>>
>> Is there a (simple) pop3 server/relay program that anybody knows of
>> that could translate a single text/html into a multipart email? The
>> actual content of the text/plain is not important.
>
>I doubt it. In the last eight years I have never heard of anyone asking for
>anything like that. Your need is rather unique.
>
>The correct solution, in your case, is to fix the broken application,
>instead of searching for a smelly band-aid workaround.
>
I agree it would be, but this is an application we have not developed
ourselves. The process to get a patch will probably take a long time.

But I guess there must exist pop3 servers with some scripting
functionality. If only to support 3rd party virus/spam filtering. I
have no problem writing a little script that rewrites an email, as
long as there is an api that provides the necessary features.
It would be a workaround for the time being.

I have searched for pop3 servers, but it is not easy to get enough
details on this point. There are plenty of perl/c# components that
handle email messages, but they are meant for clients, not running on
the server side.

Re: POP3 relay service with MIME transformation?

Joop wrote:
> Sam wrote:
>
> >Joop writes:
> >
> >> We are using an application that has problems processing HTML
> >> emails that have a single text/html part as content-type. Somehow
> >> emails with content-type multipart/alternative with both text/plain
> >> and text/html mime sections are processed fine.
> >>
> >> Is there a (simple) pop3 server/relay program that anybody knows of
> >> that could translate a single text/html into a multipart email? The
> >> actual content of the text/plain is not important.
> >
> >I doubt it. In the last eight years I have never heard of anyone
> >asking for anything like that. Your need is rather unique.
> >
> >The correct solution, in your case, is to fix the broken application,
> >instead of searching for a smelly band-aid workaround.
> >
> I agree it would be, but this is an application we have not developed
> ourselves. The process to get a patch will probably take a long time.
>
> But I guess there must exist pop3 servers with some scripting
> functionality. If only to support 3rd party virus/spam filtering. I
> have no problem writing a little script that rewrites an email, as
> long as there is an api that provides the necessary features. It
> would be a workaround for the time being.
>
> I have searched for pop3 servers, but it is not easy to get enough
> details on this point. There are plenty of perl/c# components that
> handle email messages, but they are meant for clients, not running on
> the server side.

Why not pull the emails first, transform them, and save to a local
mailbox. Then, tell your brain-dead application to pull from local POP3
server.

--
William Park , Toronto, Canada
Slackware Linux -- because it works.

Re: POP3 relay service with MIME transformation?

William Park wrote:

>Why not pull the emails first, transform them, and save to a local
>mailbox. Then, tell your brain-dead application to pull from local POP3
>server.

Yes, that was what I did yesterday. Write a little script that
consumes POP3 emails and put them via SMTP into another mailbox. It is
not bullet-proof yet (probably due to the components used...), but at
least it shows it could make a valid workaround. I still have to test
how it handles all kind of attachments, 'faking' the sender etc.

Thanks for the interest.

Re: POP3 relay service with MIME transformation?

Joop wrote:
> William Park wrote:
>
> >Why not pull the emails first, transform them, and save to a local
> >mailbox. Then, tell your brain-dead application to pull from local POP3
> >server.
>
> Yes, that was what I did yesterday. Write a little script that
> consumes POP3 emails and put them via SMTP into another mailbox. It is
> not bullet-proof yet (probably due to the components used...), but at
> least it shows it could make a valid workaround. I still have to test
> how it handles all kind of attachments, 'faking' the sender etc.
>
> Thanks for the interest.

For generating or parsing MIME email, you may also want to look at

http://freshmeat.net/projects/mboxsh/
http://home.eol.ca/~parkw/index.html#mbox

--
William Park , Toronto, Canada
Slackware Linux -- because it works.