From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/57243 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Matthias Andree Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: mx.gnus.org being very strict Date: Sat, 08 May 2004 12:03:00 +0200 Sender: ding-owner@lists.math.uh.edu Message-ID: References: <87ad0p4p57.fsf@tc-1-100.kawasaki.gol.ne.jp> <20040503192543.GB21891@fencepost> <8765ba0zup.fsf@dod.no> NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1084010724 8241 80.91.224.253 (8 May 2004 10:05:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 8 May 2004 10:05:24 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ding-owner+M5783@lists.math.uh.edu Sat May 08 12:05:15 2004 Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1BMOhn-0004oF-00 for ; Sat, 08 May 2004 12:05:15 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1BMOfw-0005BA-00; Sat, 08 May 2004 05:03:20 -0500 Original-Received: from util2.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.23]) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1BMOfl-0005B2-00 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Sat, 08 May 2004 05:03:09 -0500 Original-Received: from justine.libertine.org ([66.139.78.221] ident=postfix) by util2.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1BMOfj-0004MR-Ge for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Sat, 08 May 2004 05:03:07 -0500 Original-Received: from mail.dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de (mail.dt.e-technik.Uni-Dortmund.DE [129.217.163.1]) by justine.libertine.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 639AB3A005C for ; Sat, 8 May 2004 05:03:06 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from m2a2.dyndns.org (krusty.dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de [129.217.163.1]) by mail.dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id CBF442BB51 for ; Sat, 8 May 2004 12:03:03 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by merlin.emma.line.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 36849BC08B for ; Sat, 8 May 2004 12:03:02 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from merlin.emma.line.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (m2a2.dyndns.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 09185-03 for ; Sat, 8 May 2004 12:03:00 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: by merlin.emma.line.org (Postfix, from userid 500) id 5D59CB7428; Sat, 8 May 2004 12:03:00 +0200 (CEST) Original-To: ding@gnus.org In-Reply-To: <8765ba0zup.fsf@dod.no> (Steinar Bang's message of "Thu, 06 May 2004 09:38:38 +0200") User-Agent: Gnus/5.110003 (No Gnus v0.3) Emacs/21.3 (gnu/linux) X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at m2a2.dyndns.org Precedence: bulk Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:57243 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:57243 Steinar Bang writes: > This goes back to the summer of 1993 when I read the MIME standard, > and started using quoted-printable in emails, on an infrastructure that > consisted of sendmails universally patched to do just-send-8, and a > silently agreement that the charset used should be latin-1. > > Suffice to say the feedback I got from people receiving > quoted-unreadable was so _universally_ negative, that I quickly > stopped doing it. In the eyes of others, things just worked, and I > broke them. Virtually every MUA talks MIME today, several MTAs (among them sendmail) and MDAs (among them maildrop) and filters have options to convert quoted-printable text/* to 8bit text/*. What may have been an issue in the time when everyone was using Berkeley "mail" and perhaps elm, is not an issue today. 8BITMIME set off as a standard to smooth the transition from 7bit to 8bit, the ultimate goal would have been that every MTA supported 8BITMIME (which may, BTW, be implemented as returning to the sender an 8BITMIME mail that would have been to be sent to a 7bit destination). DJB was the first [name lacks here] to deliberately throw his sabot into the gears, breaking the whole idea of having 8BITMIME transitional. qmail as a gateway will happily trash mail. I still occasionally receive mail with d or | where a German Umlaut should have been, which proves that there are still 7bit systems in use with systems that just-send-eight. > So one thing I never would do, would be to set up an MTA to reject > messages that has 8 bit, but no MIME. I can't imaging what kind of > standards-obsessed narrowmindedness would make anyone do so. Yay. How does the recipient know the character set? Norway may not face the ambiguity because virtually everything fits, but for instance France (c=BDur is ISO-8859-15), Germany, Finland (Z charon, =A4) suffer from the confusion whether an 8bit text is ISO-8859-1, -15, Windows-1252 or UTF-8. Heuristics or "conventions" don't apply. The introduction of the Euro symbol about five years ago broke the assumption that a mail or news was in ISO-8859-1 character set. There are means to transport that character set information. These means are called MIME. If the admin determines he doesn't want to relay mail lacking such information, or information that it is 8bit content counter to what RFC-2822 says, then that is a wise one, is a perfectly legal one (he has the power to set his system's policies) and has my sympathy. Given that the relay was pretty early in the delivery chain, it was the sender who got his mail back right away - and that's where strictness and being conservative have to apply. --=20 Matthias Andree Encrypted mail welcome: my GnuPG key ID is 0x052E7D95