Subject: Quoted-Printable

From: Vincent Zoonekynd <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 May 1996 18:27:35 +0200

How to ask pine NOT to use quoted-printable for accents and the like ?

-- Vincent

---

From: [email-masked] (Jungshik Shin)
Date: 20 May 1996 05:32:00 GMT

Mark M. ([email-masked]) wrote:

: Vincent Zoonekynd ([email-masked]) wrote:
: > 
: > How to ask pine NOT to use quoted-printable for accents and the like ?

: Enable 8-bit ESMTP.

  Even with this option on, it would encode 8bit characters in QP
if 8bit esmtp negotiation with MTA  failed. Sendmail 
8.6.X(where X is 12 if not any number) is 8bit clean, 
but it doesn't follow ESMTP negotiation sequence as described 
in RFC 17?? making pine regard it as not 8bit clean. I
think it might not be a bad idea to add an option
for 'enforce 8bit' as done in Netscape-mail and Eudora.

  I also like to suggest that Base64 rather than QP
is used when an outgoing message consists mostly of
8bit characters as in Korean(euc-kr), Japanese(euc-jp),
,Chinese and other Asian lang. Unlike messages in European
character sets(iso-8859-x where x is 1....9) with
small number of 8bit characters embedded in mostly
7bit US-ASCII characters, messages in East Asian 
are made up of a large number of 8bit characters making
QP very ineffective(the length would be almost
3 times as large as before encoding) compared
with Base64(the length would be 1.5 times as large 
as before encoding)

   Jungshik Shin

---

From: [email-masked] (Jungshik Shin)
Date: 24 May 1996 00:55:51 GMT

David L Miller ([email-masked]) wrote:

: On 20 May 1996, Jungshik Shin wrote:
: > : Vincent Zoonekynd ([email-masked]) wrote:
: > 
: > : Enable 8-bit ESMTP.
: > 
: >   Even with this option on, it would encode 8bit characters in QP
: > if 8bit esmtp negotiation with MTA  failed. Sendmail 
: > 8.6.X(where X is 12 if not any number) is 8bit clean, 
: > but it doesn't follow ESMTP negotiation sequence as described 
: > in RFC 17?? making pine regard it as not 8bit clean. I
: > think it might not be a bad idea to add an option
: > for 'enforce 8bit' as done in Netscape-mail and Eudora.
: > 

: But the current 8.7.X sendmail does support 8BITMIME ESMTP
: negotiation....

   Problem is there are still quite many sendmail 8.6.x's around
which don't follow ESMTP negotiation procedure as specified
in RFC 1652(?) although they speak ESMTP. Hence, IMHO,
it wouldn't be so bad an idea to add(not replace) 
an option to 'enforce'(instead of negotiation) 8bit (i.e. turn OFF
MIME encoding).

: >   I also like to suggest that Base64 rather than QP
: > is used when an outgoing message consists mostly of
: > 8bit characters as in Korean(euc-kr), Japanese(euc-jp),
: > ,Chinese and other Asian lang. Unlike messages in European

: Pine does take the ratio of encoded to unencoded characters into
: account for long messages.  We've also recieved the opposite complaint
: that Pine was too aggressive at switching to BASE64, so we try to find
: a reasonable middle ground... 

  I'm sorry I didn't experiment with long message since I didn't expect
the length of message has any effect on which encoding to be used. I'd
like to suggest that the ratio be taken into account regardless of the
length of the message. I don't think messages in ISO-8859-X  would be
affected by this change as most, if not all, messages in ISO-8859-X
would be encoded in QP even if it's taken into account. On the other
hand, messages in EUC-KR, EUC-JP,SJIS,EUC-CN and other Asian languages
would be encoded in more economical base64 however short they may be.
I found that a message of about 350 "wide characters-2byte-"( i.e. 700
octets of 8bit characters) and 50 7bit characters(space) is still
encoded in QP while a message three times as long is encoded in
Base64.

   Thank you for your response and looking forward to hearing 
from you again. 

   Jungshik Shin