🚀 go-pugleaf

VA> == Vadim Antonov <avg@rodan.UU.NET>

 VA> "Just send 8 bits" is the proper superset of "just send 7 bits"
 VA> -- exactly the same as adding new header fields. It breaks nothing
 VA> as long as you do not use extensions.

Not if the standard specifies 7-bit NETASCII.  Most header standards
(certainly '822 and '1036) allow for user-defined and future headers.  (If
I put X- in front of all my 8-bit data, does that work? :)

 ckd> I'm certainly not insensitive to the needs of languages that don't
 ckd> fit in USASCII.  However, I'm also not insensitive to the needs of
 ckd> sites that could care less about 8-bit characters, have
 ckd> vendor-supplied software that blows up on 8-bit data, and aren't
 ckd> prepared to upgrade immediately.

 VA> If the vendor-software crashes on, say, a file with 1025-byte line
 VA> it's a bug, isn't it? If a program craches on ANYTHING it's a bug.  A
 VA> bug is a bug is a bug. Call their tech support and have them to fix
 VA> it.

And if the standard says "<protocol> data is 7-bit NETASCII." and something
claiming to be doing that protocol sends 8-bit ISO-8859-1 data, that's a
bug too.  Sure, the software *should* gracefully deal with it in an
implementation-defined manner (since the standards currently don't cover
the situation).  To stretch a point, dumping core could be considered an
implementation-dependent behavior :)

 ckd> As soon as there's a compatible SMTP extension for 8 bits, I'll at
 ckd> least try to hack it into my mailer (assuming the UIUC IDA sendmail
 ckd> folks don't beat me to it).

 VA> "Just send 8 bits" *is* backward compatible. Check your logic.

It's not backward compatible, because the standard says 7 bits, and some
software will enforce that (either by clipping the 8th bit, or dumping
core).  If I get "550 EMAL: command unrecognized" and then convert the body
to quoted-printable, that's backward compatible.  If I get "Connection
closed" and try it again every half hour (generating a core dump each
time), that's not.

 ckd> But I won't install anything that tries to pull a Nike and
 ckd> "Just Do It" to some unsuspecting mailer somewhere.

 VA> Then why on the Earth did you upgrade your software the last time?

Because it gave me better configuration flexibility than the old version,
and was more robust, and followed the SMTP standard.
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