Emil

Jul 20, 2023

Mail format/encoding converter

Emil is a filter for converting Internet Messages. It supports three basic formats MIME, SUN Mailtool and RFC822. It can be used with sendmail, as a loopback mailer, as a prefilter or backend program with a mail client program, or as a plain filter. Conversion can be configured by a configuration file, emil.cf, using sender, recipient and recipient host as input parameters or by command line arguments.

Emil is able to

  • convert the format, headers and structure, between messages of type MIME, Sun Mailtool and RFC822.
  • convert the encoding of binary data between Base64, BinHex and Uuencode.
  • convert the encoding of text to and from the MIME encoding Quoted-Printable.
  • convert character set of text between the character sets made available by Keld J. Simonsens strncnv package.
  • do one-way conversions of 8bit text to the Swedish national variant of ISO-646 or to US-ASCII.
  • convert to and from RFC1522 format headers.


Checkout these related ports:
  • Xpbiff -
  • Xmailwatcher - Mailbox checker which displays sender and subject lines of mails
  • Xmailbox - Mailbox checker with sound and animation for X Window System
  • Xmail - X-based interface to the Berkeley mail program
  • Xfce4-mailwatch-plugin - Mail notification applet for the Xfce panel
  • Xfaces - Display shaped icons for mail spool contents
  • Xcite - Exciting Cite for any Mail/News reading modes on Emacs
  • Xbuffy - Replacement for xbiff that handles multiple mail files
  • X-face-e21 - X-Face utilities for Emacs
  • Wmmaiload - Incoming mail monitor dockapp with a similar look to wmcpuload
  • Wmbiff -
  • Whoson - Implementation of `WHO iS ONline' protocol
  • Websieve - Web based Cyrus IMAP user admin client
  • Wanderlust - Mail and news system for Emacs
  • Vrfy - Verify mail address