All e-mails (and web pages) are of certain "known"
document types; otherwise your web browser wouldn't know what
to do with them. Virtually all messages are composed of multiple
MIME types. The traditional "plaintext" e-mail has a
MIME type of text/plain. In the old days, that was
enough for an e-mail: a message typed out on a traditional qwerty
keyboard. Thing is, modern e-mail clients don't stop there; they
offer built-in support for text/html and other mime
types (application/whatever).
Joe's got a procmail rule here which whacks your e-mail at
the server level. A message is comprised of miltiple MIME segments;
this rewrite "spoofs" your mail client, and makes the
parts load as ordinary text. sed is one of those
u.*x digestive noises which processes text.
At least, that's the idea.
rev. date: 02-Oct-2001
rev. by: Fred Morris