[KLUG Members] MIME and mail

[Peter Buxton]

Recently, I got this email:


 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on pbgirusntsm3/ingerrand(Release 5.0.9a 
	|January 7, 2002) at 03/05/2003 07:07:17 AM
 MIME-Version: 1.0
 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
 X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by mx0.mx.voyager.net 
	id h25Bi2E2034060


Whoa! Now, going from quoted-printable to 8 bit ISO-8859-1 isn't rocket
science, but... is it normal to autoconvert MIME messages to 8 bit
encoding on the MTA (mx0.mx.voyager.net was the first MTA at my ISP to
get this message)? Is it a space-saving issue? exim says:

   This [option makes] exim advertise the 8BIT-MIME option. According to
   RFC1652, this means it will take an 8bit message, and ensure it gets
   delivered correctly. exim won't do this: it is entirely 8bit clean
   but won't do any conversion if the next hop isn't. Therefore, if you
   set this option you are asking exim to lie and not be RFC compliant.
   But some people want it.

Is exim being too conservative about transfer-encoding?

-- 
-198
Not playing Elvis Costello isn't as good
as not playing Bob Dylan. -- lsg