Conference iosg::all-in-1_v30

>> mail attachment conversion

Please could you say at what point during the mail process (from message
creation, to message sending, to message fetching, to the recipient reading it,
or after that) you want the conversion done.

Is it an automatic conversion of some sort you want, or are you referring to the
FC CD option?  If the latter, then you can't convert an attachment, as
attachments are by definition read-only.  You have to detach it, convert the
document on its own, then re-attach it to the message.

Or are you referring to the 'mail translation' option, which converts outgoing
messages, but not their attachments, to ordinary text (rather than WPS-Plus,
etc).  There was a good reason why only the main message was converted, but
someone older than me will have to tell you as I'm too young to remember those
days :-)

Scott

    If mail is sent from TeamLinks to ALL-IN-1 IOS there are three place
    where attachments (which are in PC word processing formats such as
    Winword) can be converted to a format which is readable by ALL-IN-1
    users (e.g. WPS-PLUS). 
    
    Firstly a TeamLinks user can convert the attachment to WPS-PLUS on the
    PC before sending it. In order for this to work the user must know what
    'type' of user he is sending to. It also puts restrictions on the use of
    distribution lists.
    
    Secondly, attachments can be converted while passing through Message
    Router (using MAILbus Conversion Manager). In the case where TeamLinks
    is using ALL-IN-1 as a mail server messages sent to interactive users
    on the same ALL-IN-1 system do not pass through Message Router and are
    therefore not converted.
    
    Thirdly, on receiving the message an ALL-IN-1 user can file the attachment 
    and convert it explicitly using the the CD option or implicitly by reading,
    editing or printing the attachment (where the required converters have 
    been integrated and document handling has been defined). 
    
    My question is, will the mail read/print functions be extended to make
    use of document handling definitions when reading/printing foreign 
    attachments ? This would mean that users need not file attachments 
    before reading them and could therefore retain the relationship between
    the attachment and the message header.
    
    I realise that an attachment is read-only but this does not stop a
    converted copy of the attachment being displayed to the user instead of
    the attachment it self.
    
    Bill.
    

    The change planned in this area (for the MUP) is that when reading
    messages the system will be smarter about recognising data types
    supported by CDA and then invoking the CDA character cell formatter to
    view them. Some new CDA converters have been added to the MUP
    (including WPCORP and RTF). So, for example, if a TeamLinks user sends
    a WPCORP document to an ALL-IN-1 user on a system without the WPCORP
    integration, that user will be able to read the message (or the
    relevant attachment of the message) without having to FAM the
    attachment.
    
    For more on this and future stuff in this area, see A1INFO (one of the
    last notes in it).   

    Nigel,
    
    Thanks for your reply. 
    
    I think that the changes you describe are insufficient. We need the
    ability to integrate other converter libraries besides CDA. I find that
    Winword is the most popular document format among users and CDA does
    not provide a native Winword converter. RTF is not an answer as it
    requires Winword documents to be converted to RTF at some point. If the
    sender has to convert the document to RTF he/she might as well convert
    it to WPS-PLUS.
    
    Document conversion is one of the most important parts of an ALL-IN-1 to
    TeamLinks migration. A lot of good work has been done in TeamLinks V2.0
    to facilitate this but I think a more comprehensive approach should be
    taken on the ALL-IN-1 side.
    
    Bill.

>    My question is, will the mail read/print functions be extended to make
>    use of document handling definitions when reading/printing foreign 
>    attachments ? This would mean that users need not file attachments 
>    before reading them and could therefore retain the relationship between
>    the attachment and the message header.
    

ALL-IN-1 can be configured by creating a FORMAT master entry to run any
application to perform formatting, e.g. execute an ALL-IN-1 function, run 
an application from DCL.

During an ALL-IN-1 Print operation each attachment is individually
formatted according to it's Handling and/or Data type.  It has been done
this way since ALL-IN-1 V2.3.  A normal Read operation does not for
performance reasons fully format each attachment. However, a Print to
TERMINAL will indivudually format each attachment and display the output 
files to the user.


Richard