| From: | Robert Watkins <robert.watkins@******.COM> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Mailing problems explained! [OT] |
| Date: | Tue, 19 May 1998 14:47:50 +1000 |
>On an aside, I assume there'll be this '7 bit encoding' bit in this mail.
>Is it a problem or a nuisance?
Actually, no there isn't... :0
Okay, for those interested, here's the lowdown...
AFAIK, the 'problem' with 7-bit encoding only affects Microsoft mail readers
(Outlook, Outlook Express, Internet Mail and News). It manifests by not
formatting a reply correctly (the quote markers are not inserted in front of
the quoted text).
According to the Microsoft knowledge base, this is an acknowledged problem
with Internet Mail and News, and has become a problem in Outlook and Outlook
Express by propagation. The reason has to do with how mailers format MIME
messages.
MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a way of sending non-text
data as text. It includes various plain text modes, including HTML (which,
when read correctly, gives formatted text), BASE64 (used to transfer binary
files in an ASCII form), and Quoted Printable, which allows for text to be
spread over multiple lines and split using 'soft' returns, instead of hard
returns (so if you resize your window, the text re-wraps).
The problem is that, given certain MIME commands, the MS mailers interpret
normal plain text as being Quoted Printable, and so they don't know how to
break it up and put in the quote markers, EVEN IF IT IS ALREADY BROKEN UP.
So it doesn't try.
An example of a MIME command in the mail header that causes this is:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
An example of a MIME command in the mail header that _doesn't_ cause this
is:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
(No, I don't know what the difference is... but it's either the charset or
the capitalisation that causes the behaviour difference).
Is it a problem? No, not really... the text is still inserted, it's just not
quoted, and you have to watch for it and insert the quotes by hand.
Is it a nuisance? Yes. Should other people go out of their way to prevent
it? No, not really. It's a bug in the MS readers, and shouldn't really be
pampered to. If it's a really big nuisance to you, go grab another free mail
reader, like Pegasus, Eudora Lite, or Netscape Mail. If it's _really_ a
nuisance to you, go hassle Microsoft. It's an acknowledged bug (the article
reference is Q154312), so they may even decide to fix it for you.
Finally: If there are _no_ MIME commands in the mail header, it works
correctly. Rune's message which he was worried about did not contain MIME
commands. For what it's worth, a true 'plain text' message should NOT have
MIME commands, so any mailer which does this isn't correct (I know, my
mailer (MS Outlook Express) has MIME commands in it), but most modern
mailers seem to do so as it makes handling attachments a bit easier, I
guess.
Hmm... maybe this should be added to the ShadowRN FAQ. I'll keep a copy of
this handy, though, so I can forward it to people privately should the
matter come up again.
--
sig deleted to conserve electrons. robert.watkins@******.com
