README.org

Attachment Converter

For Outside Users

Attachment Converter is in alpha. If you’d like to try it out, please follow the instructions on our project website.

For UChicago Library Developers

The guides on our development workflow break down into two main documents:

• adding new features
• using sandboxed switches

Current State of the Project

We have ambitions to make Attachment Converter follow library-executable design. Although it can be installed as a library, for the first release, we are focusing on its executable functionality.

The following features are presently working:

• Attachment Converter can be used with one of two email parsing backends: OCamlnet or Mr. Mime. (This is not yet configurable but it will be soon—right now, you have to change the email parsing backend by changing one line of the source code.)
• Attachment Converter will print out a “skeleton” of the email it is converting, showing the user the before and after structure.
• By default, Attachment Converter converts:
  • PDF
  • DOC
  • DOCX
  • XLS
  • XLSX
  • JPG
  • GIF
• Attachment Converter follows Unix filter design, accepting standard in and outputting to standard out.
• Attachment Converter allows the user to configure the external utilities it calls out to to perform the relevant conversions in its configuration file.

Current Team

Our illustrious team of developers currently includes:

• Nathan Mull
• Matt Teichman
• Emily Schartz
• Ben Kim

Previous developers include:

• Owen Price Skelly
• Cormac Duhamel
• Nishchay Karle
• Obi Obetta

Matt Teichman, Nathan Mull, Emily Schartz, and Keith Waclena will be contributing to and maintaining the project on an longterm basis. Matt is currently in charge of managing the project.

Background on the email format

Reading

Here is a link to the RFC-s that define the email specification. These are shamelessly pilfered from the impressive Mr. Mime GitHub README:

• https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc822
• https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2822
• https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5321
• https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5322
• https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2045
• https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2046
• https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2047
• https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2049
• https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6532

Viewing

Romain Calascibetta’s overview talk from ICFP 2016 is truly excellent and recommended to all. You never knew email addresses could be so complicated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQkRsNEo25k