🚀 go-pugleaf

JS> == John Stanley <stanley@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU>

 JS> Is there any good reason why MIME chose to go with its own version of
 JS> binary encoding instead of using UUENCODE?

Yes.

 JS> While there are some systems that can't pass UUENCODEd data
 JS> (converting one ASCII character to something else, as I recall),
 JS> UUENCODE IS almost universally available, while MIME is not.

The systems in question (including EBCDIC-ASCII conversion tables and the
like) *break* uu*code.

To quote from RFC1341:
            NOTE:  This subset has the important  property  that  it  is
            represented   identically   in  all  versions  of  ISO  646,
            including US ASCII, and all characters  in  the  subset  are
            also  represented  identically  in  all  versions of EBCDIC.
            Other popular encodings, such as the encoding  used  by  the
            UUENCODE  utility  and the base85 encoding specified as part
            of Level 2 PostScript, do not share  these  properties,  and
            thus  do  not  fulfill the portability requirements a binary
            transport encoding for mail must meet.

 JS> It is rather counterproductive to require a user to know that the
 JS> recipient's mailer is MIME compatible before sending a binary.

At the moment, this is true.  However, since source for base64 encoders
(and decoders, of course) has been made available, we will hopefully start
seeing them on more and more operating systems (and even a program loader
or two :).
--
 * Christopher Davis * <ckd@eff.org> * <ckd@kei.com> * [CKD1] * MIME * RIPEM *