Re: How to bring a file from Windows to Debian?
On 19-Apr-99 Keith G. Murphy wrote:
> That makes me curious. He used "quoted-printable". (He also used a
> multipart message with HTML as one of the parts, but that's irrelevant
> here). Can PINE not handle that? How do other list users feel about
> using "quoted-printable"? The idea is that the readers will wrap the
> lines to their liking. (Along with some different handling of 8-bit
> characters). If your reader does not handle it, or you don't have it
> set properly, the message will indeed look like a big long line.
Quoted-printable is an abomination, and the least satisfactory of all the
solutions to non-ASCII/non-RFC mail.
As well as planting "=20" at the end of long-line breaks (and granted
there is a need for a solution to the long-line problem), any true "="
goes into "=3D", as well of course as all characters with codes > 128
going into "=XX". So far so bad. The fun steps up when someone forwards
such a message to via another Q-P channel, whereupon we get
"="->"=3D"->"=3D3D", and so on. Strictly speaking MUAs are supposed to be
able to unwrap all that from whatever depth it has reached, but I never
met one that could take further than one level. In any case, what if the
original message contained an intentional "=3D" (like this one -- if any
of you are viewing this and you mailer unwraps the pseuso-QP you won't
see what I wrote).
As far as long lines are concerned, if you need to send them then send
them as base64- or uuencoded attachments. That way everything is
preserved. Otherwise, God be merciful to your PostScript files, for
instance. (Some hyper-RFC-compliant mail handlers introduce their
own line breaks ... ).
As for foreign languages: since the Internet, and nowadays most mail
servers, are 8-bit clean, most people should meet with no trouble if
they are simply sent "in clear" with the appropriate charset header.
But otherwise the same solution (encoded attachments) is good.
These days, any competent MUA should be able to cope with these basic
MIME issues, and quote-printable should be abandoned.
Since you ask, that's how I feel!
Cheers,
Ted.
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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Date: 19-Apr-99 Time: 18:32:26
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