From: asjo@koldfront.dk (Adam Sjøgren)
To: info-gnus-english@gnu.org
Subject: Re: unreadable message
Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2008 13:24:53 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87od0qbe22.fsf@topper.koldfront.dk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <mailman.3101.1226122268.25473.info-gnus-english@gnu.org>
On Sat, 08 Nov 2008 16:05:02 +1000, Alexey wrote:
>> What, exactly, seems to be the problem?
> Once the post command (C-c C-c) typed, it may produce garbage.
base64 encoding is part of the MIME specification¹. It can hardly be
classsified as "garbage".
> People, who receive the mail, cannot read it. For instance, a friend
> of mine, who is an ordinary windows user, tried to read it on
> different machines but with no luck. Frequently, when that happens, I
> cannot read it either.
Which programmes did he try? I find it quite hard to believe that any
modern mail-programme does not decode Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
automatically.
> While you managed to decode that bit, which was actually readable in
> my outgoing mail box but unreadable at my friend's machine, there is
> no guarantee it's always possible to do that easily.
Well, base64 encoding is in the MIME standard, so all mail programmes
that understand MIME _ought_ to be able to decode it.
> Usually, what you get after decoding is a set of numbers with
> backslashes in front of them, which are the unicode character codes,
> as I understand it.
How did you come to this understanding?
> I don't think that manually running base64 decoding is an acceptable
> alternative for a decent MUA.
Of course not. A decent MUA automatically does base64 decoding when
encountering a base64-encode email. Just as it automatically decodes
quoted-printable and handles charsets.
> Unfortunately, the bug is of occasional nature, which means not every
> text causes that to happen. It seems that Gnus/Emacs functions dealing
> with unicode may have this bug.
I am not sure this is a bug in Gnus - from what you have presented so
far, it sounds like lack of MIME support in your friends' programmes.
Gnus chooses the encoding based on what the most efficient encoding is -
this may be why you think it the behaviour is occational, it depends on
t he content:
,----[ C-h v mm-content-transfer-encoding-defaults RET ]
| `mm-content-transfer-encoding-defaults' is a variable declared in Lisp.
| -- loaded from "mm-encode"
|
| Value: (("text/x-patch" 8bit) ("text/.*" qp-or-base64) ("message/rfc822" 8bit) ("application/emacs-lisp" qp-or-base64) ("application/x-emacs-lisp" qp-or-base64) ("application/x-patch" qp-or-base64) (".*" base64))
|
| Documentation:
| Alist of regexps that match MIME types and their encodings.
| If the encoding is `qp-or-base64', then either quoted-printable
| or base64 will be used, depending on what is more efficient.
|
| `qp-or-base64' has another effect. It will fold long lines so that
| MIME parts may not be broken by MTA. So do `quoted-printable' and
| `base64'.
|
| Note: It affects body encoding only when a part is a raw forwarded
| message (which will be made by `gnus-summary-mail-forward' with the
| arg 2 for example) or is neither the text/* type nor the message/*
| type. Even though in those cases, you can use the `encoding' MML tag
| to specify encoding of non-ASCII MIME parts.
`----
You can change the value of this variable if you don't want Gnus to
choose between quoted-printable and base64 automatically.
Best regards,
Adam
¹ <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2045>
--
"you will enjoy the video." Adam Sjøgren
asjo@koldfront.dk
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2008-11-08 12:24 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <20081030170648.D58A5A7629@sycore.org>
2008-11-08 6:05 ` Alexey Pustyntsev
[not found] ` <mailman.3101.1226122268.25473.info-gnus-english@gnu.org>
2008-11-08 12:24 ` Adam Sjøgren [this message]
[not found] <20081205170521.82FB8B3A9B@sycore.org>
2008-12-07 13:09 ` Alexey Pustyntsev
[not found] ` <mailman.2130.1228657054.26697.info-gnus-english@gnu.org>
2008-12-07 13:53 ` Adam Sjøgren
[not found] <20081122170614.43FA5AF4EA@sycore.org>
2008-12-03 12:52 ` Alexey Pustyntsev
[not found] <20081119120241.18DB3AE3A7@sycore.org>
[not found] ` <1682991423.20081121000628@mail.ru>
2008-12-03 9:12 ` Alexey Pustyntsev
[not found] <20081120170954.CEF57AEB9D@sycore.org>
2008-11-21 4:26 ` Alexey Pustyntsev
[not found] ` <87k5ah83de.fsf@marauder.physik.uni-ulm.de>
2008-12-04 19:53 ` Reiner Steib
[not found] ` <mailman.913.1227239500.26697.info-gnus-english@gnu.org>
2008-11-21 18:38 ` Adam Sjøgren
[not found] <20081118170628.3744BADFB1@sycore.org>
2008-11-19 3:41 ` Alexey Pustyntsev
[not found] <20081108164035.A7A80AA94F@sycore.org>
2008-11-08 19:22 ` Alexey Pustyntsev
[not found] ` <mailman.3140.1226170065.25473.info-gnus-english@gnu.org>
2008-11-17 19:29 ` Adam Sjøgren
[not found] <20081003161005.9293E9D50B@sycore.org>
2008-10-29 4:02 ` Alexey Pustyntsev
[not found] ` <mailman.2329.1225250763.25473.info-gnus-english@gnu.org>
2008-10-29 19:58 ` Adam Sjøgren
2008-11-08 15:50 ` poppyer
[not found] <20081002160838.596DE9CE6D@sycore.org>
2008-10-03 3:33 ` Alexey Pustyntsev
[not found] <20080924160707.CC00B99F3C@sycore.org>
2008-10-01 6:54 ` Alexey Pustyntsev
2008-10-01 7:02 ` Alexey Pustyntsev
2008-10-01 17:47 ` Reiner Steib
2008-09-14 2:50 Alexey Pustyntsev
2008-09-23 19:26 ` Reiner Steib
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