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How is ARPA used with FSC?
When a message leaves HP Desk through an FSC gateway, it is in ARPA
Format, that is, the contents of the file conform to the standard set out
in the document RFC 822 Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text
Messages.
An important point to note about the ARPA format is that it can be
interpreted visually, that is, it can be printed directly without any
conversion needing to be applied. Strictly speaking, you will always
need a program to interpret the control sequences in the file, but it is
possible to simply copy a file to a printer if you wish.
The file that HP Desk uses can be in one of three formats depending on
how the gateway is configured. The header formats are different, but
they basically all include a list of recipients of the message (TO, CC,
BCC, and FROM), the subject, acknowledgment details, message priority and
other related network information, all followed by the message text in
standard form. All of the information is in a defined format so that an
application can parse the header to extract the data that it needs. As
well as specifying the format of the header information, HP Desk also
defines an overall message structure. The message structure depends on
which FSC gateway format is being used.
The three formats are:
ARPA Standard The ARPA header followed by the entire HP Desk
message (in Text format).
ARPA Compressed The ARPA header followed by the message (in text
format) without the original HP Desk Distribution
List.
ARPA Reference The ARPA header followed by a list of the MPE files
which make up the message. These files are in their
original format, for example HP Word document, Text
item, AdvanceWrite file.
For an external system to receive messages from HP Desk, it must be able
to interpret files in ARPA format.
ARPA only allows the use of 7 bit ASCII characters in message text and
the subject field.
One important factor in deciding which ARPA format to use, is how the
message contents (as distinct from the ARPA header) are handled as the
message enters or leaves HP Desk.
In ARPA Standard and Compressed formats, message text is treated as text
records of up to 80 bytes in length. The contents of messages leaving HP
Desk are converted to text, where possible, and generated as 80 byte
lines. Messages entering HP Desk are expected to be in text form and
will be built into 80 byte lines, even if the original lines were longer
than 80 bytes.
In ARPA Reference format, the referenced files forming the message
contents normally retain their original format when entering or leaving
HP Desk.
If you are sending the ARPA files on to a foreign mailing network, your
application must translate the information in the ARPA header into a
format understood by the foreign system.