From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/24280 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Graham Todd Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: PDF's as base64 vs. Q/P encoded attachments Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1999 05:13:18 GMT Organization: SunSITE Denmark (sunsite.auc.dk) Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035161873 7843 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 00:57:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 00:57:53 +0000 (UTC) Return-Path: Original-Received: from farabi.math.uh.edu (farabi.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.57]) by sclp3.sclp.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id BAA17407 for ; Fri, 16 Jul 1999 01:17:21 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by farabi.math.uh.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id AAB20098; Fri, 16 Jul 1999 00:13:43 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Fri, 16 Jul 1999 00:14:36 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com (root@sclp3.sclp.com [204.252.123.139]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA09652 for ; Fri, 16 Jul 1999 00:14:25 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from sunsite.auc.dk (sunsite.auc.dk [130.225.51.30]) by sclp3.sclp.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id BAA17283 for ; Fri, 16 Jul 1999 01:13:20 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: (qmail 1681 invoked by uid 509); 16 Jul 1999 05:13:19 -0000 Original-To: ding@gnus.org Original-Path: not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: emacs.ding User-Agent: Gnus/5.070095 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.95) XEmacs/20.4 (Emerald) Original-Lines: 34 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.172.12.232 Original-X-Complaints-To: news@sunsite.auc.dk Original-X-Trace: sunsite.auc.dk 932101998 206.172.12.232 (Fri, 16 Jul 1999 07:13:18 MET DST) Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1999 07:13:18 MET DST Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:24280 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:24280 This is just for the information of anyone who has a similar problem since I'm not too knowledgeable about MIME and encoding schemes. There was a thread a while ago about how to decide between encoding schemes for attachments and Lars wrote a function that switched between them based on efficiency. I think it was decided that if roughly 1/6 of the characters were non-ASCII, then base64 should be used otherwise Q/P (I may be wrong here). So Gnus now tries to encode PDF's I create as Q/P (I'm pretty sure it didn't do this before). The problem is that receiving PDF's as Q/P seems to break the MIME handling of the Windows version of Netscape Mail somehow so that Windows users that I correspond with couldn't read the attached PDF files in Acrobat. Acrobat gave an error message saying the files were broken. As an aside I can detach and read PDF's sent as Q/P content to myself using the Unix (linux & freebsd) versions of Acrobat and Netscape just fine. If the cut-off point for encoding is 1/6 or more non-ASCII characters most PDF's would/should get encoded as base64 wouldn't they? Anyway they appear ASCIIish to Gnus. I did something like this to fix it: (push '("application/pdf" base64) mm-content-transfer-encoding-alist) so that PDF's are always encoded base64. regards, -- Graham Todd