From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Dec 19 10:28:18 1996 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id KAA03827 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 19 Dec 1996 10:28:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id KAA03821 for ; Thu, 19 Dec 1996 10:28:15 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id LAA11873; Thu, 19 Dec 1996 11:26:08 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199612191826.LAA11873@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: 8-bit characters in gecos field To: roberto@keltia.freenix.fr (Ollivier Robert) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 11:26:08 -0700 (MST) Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: from "Ollivier Robert" at Dec 19, 96 07:29:00 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > According to David Nugent: > > Perhaps our ports can be patched to do q-p translation if they > > don't already? Most imap2bis servers support MIME in any case. > > Automatic conversion is not always a good idea. The PGP/MIME future > standard encodes somethings in QP when signing in order to preserve > characters and converting them means that you lose the signature. The signature is encapsulating data. You could make the same argument about byte-stuffing the '.' at the front of lines to make sure a naked '.' not intended as a DATA state terminator was not seen as such. The point of fact is that the quoting is reversed when the data leaves the RFC821 transport encapsulation. Issues of ^">From" and ^" From" conversion of ^"From" are an issue of the local MDA (Mail Delivery Agent), and are only a problem if the MDA (incorrectly) dumps all mail in a single file so that the ^"From" is used (also incorrectly) as a message seperator. Which is to say, the message body should be unaltered after being unquoted following quoting for transport. The same arguments apply to a quoting "fingerd" and an unquoting "finger". Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.