Encoding Mime articles before transmission ?

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2 total messages Started by Christophe Wolfhugel Fri, 01 Jan 1993 18:34

#233

Author: Christophe Wolfhugel
Date: Fri, 01 Jan 1993 18:34

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What policy should a site adopt when forwarding Mime articles ?
There are currently sites posting and sending articles in 8bit
(Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit), which is fine on the 8-bit
news systems.  But I doubt that currently the sender would
encode it in "quoted-printable" before transmitting to a 7-bit
site.

Is it reasonnable if a site performs such conversion before
forwarding the article to its 7-bit neighbors (and possibly to
many other sites behind).

I offten see articles coded in "8bit" arriving here, for example
in comp.sys.next groups.  I can forward them as is to the other
sites, regardless if they support 7 or 8 bit, or encode them in
"quoted-printable", and at this point articles would get converted
back only if the newsreader has the adequate software.

This is not a technical question... software already exists
(in beta :)) for converting articles within the news system.

-- 
Christophe Wolfhugel    |    Email: Christophe.Wolfhugel@grasp.insa-lyon.fr
  "Dernier reve de 92: demain l'Europe ..."

Re: Encoding Mime articles before transmission ?

#245

Author: Henry Spencer
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 1993 00:38

24 lines
1703 bytes

In article <1i22s8INNca9@grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr> Christophe.Wolfhugel@grasp.insa-lyon.fr (Christophe Wolfhugel) writes:
>What policy should a site adopt when forwarding Mime articles ?
>There are currently sites posting and sending articles in 8bit
>(Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit), which is fine on the 8-bit
>news systems.  But I doubt that currently the sender would
>encode it in "quoted-printable" before transmitting to a 7-bit
>site.

The sender shouldn't be using 8bit CTE unless he is sure that all sites
reached by the article can cope properly with 8-bit encodings.  All the
relevant standards, at this time, specify 7-bit transmission, so no site
is obliged to handle 8-bit stuff correctly except by prearrangement.

>Is it reasonnable if a site performs such conversion before
>forwarding the article to its 7-bit neighbors (and possibly to
>many other sites behind).

You *must not* forward articles using 8-bit encodings to neighbors who
have not explicitly agreed to receive such articles.  See above comment
on standards.  The legitimate actions are to convert the article or
decline to forward it.  Converting it sounds reasonable to me.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry

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