🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1galsqINNr88@gap.caltech.edu> jack@ccsf.caltech.edu (Jack Stewart) writes:
>As I understand, the main reason for MIME to use base64 encoding (as
>opposed to uuencode, 8bit transparent, XDR, or BER ) was that they
>needed an encoded scheme that would remain uncorrupted accross all
>platforms and architectures and existing mailers.  Apparently this is
>a real problem with IBM VM/CMS machines.  base64 encoding was the only
>thing that would survive these machines.  Hopefully these machines
>will go away some day and then we can use a more reasonable encoding
>mechanism.

What would be "more reasonable"?  I can well believe that CMS was the
worst case, but if you want to transmit arbitrary bits, there are lots
of other systems with limitations that make an encoding necessary.
(For example, most sendmail implementations croak on 8-bit characters
in headers, I'm told.)

Also, can you explain your list of "as opposed to" encodings?  It seems
to mix several different issues.  XDR and BER are ways of encoding higher-
level data structures as a bit stream, not ways of getting arbitrary bits
through limited channels.  8-bit transparent isn't an encoding, it's the
*absence* of an encoding.  And uuencode is essentially identical to
base64 except that it's not as good, due to some fundamental design
mistakes; in particular, it isn't any more compact.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry