Pineapple News has the ability to decode binary attachments that are part of newsgroup messages. Supported formats are MIME base64, MIME inline, uuencode, and yenc. The only other attachment format I’m aware of is BinHex, which was once popular on the Macintosh, but seems to be fading. The program can handle a single message that contains many small attachments, or large attachments spread across two or more message files.
Pineapple News doesn’t handle PAR, RAR, or NZB files, but I might add such a feature in the future, if enough people want it. The program also does not yet have the ability to post messages with binary attachments, but that will definitely be coming in a later version.
Message attachment support is an enhanced feature that you can only use if you pay for Pineapple News. For more information, see the help topic Registration.
To view an attachment, first select the message that you’re interested in by clicking on it in the headers view. If the message contains one or more attachments, then a square button will appear at the far right end of the message header bar. The button will display an icon that represents the attachment’s file type, if it can be determined.
To view a message attachment, click the attachment button. If you’d rather use the keyboard, you can use the shortcut key ⌥A. Or you can select the Message menu, then “Attachment,” then “Open.” A window will appear showing progress as the program converts text from the message into a binary file. Finally, the file will be launched in whatever viewer program is appropriate for that type of file, according to the associations maintained by Mac OS X. If the message contains more than one attachment, then they will all be decoded, and each attachment will be opened in turn.
To save an attachment, control-click or right-click on the attachment button. You should see a context menu appear. If the message contains only one attachment, then the menu will contain two items, “Open” and “Save.” Select “Save,” and you’ll get a file panel that will prompt you for a folder where you’d like to save the file. If the message contains more than one attachment, then the context menu will contain an item for each that leads to a sub-menu with “Open” and “Save” items.
Most news servers restrict the maximum size for newsgroup messages. Some attachments are so big that they won’t fit into a single message. Attachments of this type are spread across two or more messages, so that each part will be under the size limit.
To view a message of this type, select the first message of the set. You should see an attachment button appear as usual. This won’t work if you’ve selected the second or subsequent parts, those messages will never display an attachment button.
When you click the attachment button, Pineapple News will examine all messages in the current newsgroup or saved message folder, attempting to find all parts that make up the attachment. For uuencode and yenc attachments, it examines the subject lines: multi-message attachments nearly always have subjects that are in the form “Filename.ext (1/3)”, “Filename.ext (2/3)”, and so on. MIME multi-part attachments have a unique message ID string embedded in each part, which is a far more reliable method for grouping message parts together. For MIME multi-part attachments, Pineapple News ignores the messages’ subject strings and uses the unique message ID instead.
It’s possible that Pineapple News will not be able to find all parts of the attachment. If that happens, it will display an error message and stop. Look through the headers view and make sure that all messages are present and that they have all been completely downloaded. It might help to create a storage folder, drag messages into it one by one, and perform the attachment decode there.
Say you’re looking at a newsgroup with thousands of messages, some of them text, many of them secondary attachment parts, and a bunch that contain the first parts of attachments. If you’ve come to this group just for the binaries, you’ll only be interested in the third type.
Pineapple News will eventually contain a filtering feature that should make it easy to hide the stuff you’re not interested in. Until then, here’s a workaround. The headers view can display a column called “Attach.” If you don’t have it displayed, add it to the view by control-clicking on the header view’s column headers, which should bring up a context menu. Select the item marked “Attach,” which should add that column to the view. Sort the view according to that column by clicking on the column header. Messages that contain the first parts of attachments will have an A in that column. Secondary parts will have an S. If a message doesn’t contain any type of attachment, it will have nothing at all in that column.
If you don’t want to keep the view sorted according to attachment, you can select all the secondary and non-attachment messages and mark them all read. Go to some other group and come back to this one, and the only unread messages you’ll see will be the ones that contain the first parts of attachments.
When you view a message attachment, it is launched in a handler app. For example, when you click on a JPEG file, it will probably open in the Preview app. You may find yourself disappointed in the particular app that was chosen, and wish you could assign a different one. Pineapple News has no control over what handler apps are used. That is a function of Mac OS X.
Although Mac OS X maintains app-to-file associations, it does not make it easy for you to edit them. It’s probably easiest to bypass the operating system’s poor editing abilities altogether, and go with a third-party solution. I recommend RCDefaultApp, which is well-designed, easy to use, and free.