Using Mail

Adding Microsoft attachment types

If your system includes SCO Wabi Release 2.0 and one or more of the Microsoft^® Windows (TM) 3.1 software-based applications: Microsoft Word for Windows version 6.0 or later, Microsoft Excel version 5.0 or later, and Microsoft PowerPoint version 4.0 or later, you can enable Mail to use these programs for viewing, creating, or editing attachments. For reasonable performance, We recommend a minimum of 16 MB of RAM, and 32 MB is desirable.

Enable Mail to use these applications system-wide (for all users on the system) by editing /usr/lib/scomail/mailcap. To change just your own Mail environment, copy /usr/lib/scomail/mailcap to $HOME/.mailcap (if you already have a .mailcap file in your home directory, edit that file). For more information about .mailcap, see ``Specifying printer and viewer capabilities''. Uncomment the appropriate lines in the file by deleting the number sign (#) from the front of the line:

To use Microsoft Word, uncomment the line that begins:

application/msword
To use Microsoft Excel, uncomment the line that begins:

application/x-msexcel
To use Microsoft PowerPoint, uncomment the line that begins:

application/x-mspowerpnt

You can now use the appropriate attachment type (or types), keeping in mind:

You must print attachments with these types from within the application.
The application start up time when you create an attachment may be slow, depending on how much memory your system has.
Sending documents that include external links to other documents (such as a Word document that includes links to an Excel document) via mail is not reliable; break or delete links before sending to avoid error messages.

Using earlier versions of Microsoft applications

If you have different versions of the Microsoft applications, there are additional steps to enabling Mail to use them.

To make a system-wide change, use each application to create an empty document in /usr/lib/scomail. For Word for Windows, the document's name should be msword-empty. For Excel, the document's name should be msexcel-empty. For PowerPoint, the document's name should be mspowerpnt-empty.

To enable use of the Microsoft applications in just your own Mail environment, use each application to create an empty document in your home directory hierarchy.

To edit the file for Microsoft Word, copy /usr/lib/scomail/msword-compose to $HOME/bin/msword-compose, and edit the entry: cp $HOME/bin/msword-empty $1
To edit the file for Microsoft Excel, copy /usr/lib/scomail/msexcel-compose to $HOME/bin/msexcel-compose, and edit the entry: cp $HOME/bin/msexcel-empty $1
To edit the file for Microsoft PowerPoint, copy /usr/lib/scomail/mspowerpnt-compose to $HOME/bin/mspowerpnt-compose, and edit the entry: cp $HOME/bin/mspowerpnt-empty $1

In each case, change the pathname in this entry to indicate the pathname of the empty document you created (here called empty_document_pathname):

cp empty_document_pathname $1