In message <[log in to unmask]> on
Thu, 28 Sep 2006, Joe Cutting <[log in to unmask]> wrote
>I don't want to keep bashing this one but as far as I can see the
>people who are sending emails which end up corrupted are unaware of
>this and without having it pointed out to them might wonder why they're
>not getting that much response.
>Andreas's emails appeared to me as
>Brian=20Kelly's=20remarks=20about=20MIME=20types=20is=20an=20issue=20we=
>20=
>
>And David Dawson's email appeared as
>QWxsCgpZb3UgbWF5IGJlIGludGVyZXN0ZWQgaW4gdGhpcyBhbm5vdW5jZW1lbnQgZnJvbSB0
>aGUg
To expand a little on what Brian Kelly has explained:
Andrea's message has the headers
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
whereas David's has the headers
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
As Brian said, these encodings are ways of sending 8-bit data through
email systems which do not, in general, support more than 7 bits.
They are most commonly invoked by messages that include a pound
character, which is an 8-bit character not in the US-ASCII character
set.
Quoted-printable is used when there is just a few characters to encode,
as the rest of the message remains fairly legible. Spaces need not be
replaced by the "=20" code, but some mailing systems such as Andrea's
are over-enthusiastic and do this too.
Base64 encoding is used when there are many unprintable characters, as
when sending binary files such as images or word processor documents.
Perhaps David's use of the UTF-8 character set caused his mailing
software to treat his message as binary data.
So long as the appropriate headers are in place to show whether, and
how, a message has been encoded, most email software should be able to
decode the message and display it without any coding being visible.
The problem is probably the way in which digests are compiled for this
mailing list. The rules are in <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2046.txt>,
where the "multipart/mixed" format allows each message within a
compilation to have its own header, showing how it has been encoded.
As I never subscribe to digest versions of mailing lists, I cannot check
what headers the digests of this list contain, but I think that that is
the first place to look.
It is much easier to avoid the problem by subscribing to receive
individual messages and directing them to a separate folder in your
email database. This is just as convenient as receiving a digest, and
makes it easy to sort, move, delete or reply to individual messages.
Leonard Will
--
Willpower Information (Partners: Dr Leonard D Will, Sheena E Will)
Information Management Consultants Tel: +44 (0)20 8372 0092
27 Calshot Way, Enfield, Middlesex EN2 7BQ, UK. Fax: +44 (0)870 051 7276
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