[NTLUG:Discuss] OT attachments to email

[Fred James]

All
This a bit off topic, but it does start with Unix.  The question first, 
and then the details for those who are interested.

Question:
 From a Unix system, I need to send script generated email to a list of 
addresses with an attachment.  The recipients are a mixed bag - PC and 
MAC users, and some use Notes as their mail client.  As detailed below, 
the result for some MAC/Notes user is less than satisfactory when I use 
'uuencode'.  Can anyone suggest another route, or some documentation, 
please?  Or is this just a hopeless case of non-interoperability?

Thank you in advance for any help you may be able to offer
Regards
Fred James

Details:
(1) I am generating a message and sending it to a list, with an 
attachment which happens to be a Word document (that's what I was given 
to send).
(2) The message is generated on a Unix box (IRIX 6.5) by a BASH script, 
and sent out using 'mailx' which on IRIX supports the tilde escapes 
(such as ~| ~rt ~s).
(3) The first line in the text file that is sent with the command 'cat 
filename | mailx address' is '~|/usr/bsd/uuencode /localpath/filename 
remote_filename'

The results have been very good with the '*.doc' file, whether gzip'd or 
not, except there is a 'gotcha' for some users.

The corporation encourages (mandates for some) the use of Lotus Notes, 
and so some folks receive their email through Notes.  That's OK for most 
folks, especially those on a PC running some version of Windows.  The 
problem comes with MACs, where when using the method outlined above they 
receive the attachment as an ASCII text block that is part of the 
message body - that is ugly.

If I use the command line 'uuencode localpath/filename remote_filename | 
mailx -s "subject line" address', the MAC/Notes user gets an attachment 
that can be saved and opened successfully through MS Word.  But it the 
icon indicates that the file isn't recognized as a MS Word document (and 
all that that means to the user).

Side Note:  A PC/Notes user who received the original message/attachment 
successfully, can then forward that same bundle to a MAC/Notes user who 
does then receive and open the forwarded message/attachment successfully 
- go figure.