Rocksolid Light

Welcome to novaBBS (click a section below)

mail  files  register  newsreader  groups  login

Message-ID:  

I wish you humans would leave me alone.


computers / comp.mail.pine / Re: MIME header question

SubjectAuthor
* MIME header questionAdam H. Kerman
`* Re: MIME header questionEduardo Chappa
 +* Re: MIME header questionAdam H. Kerman
 |`* Re: MIME header questionEduardo Chappa
 | `- Re: MIME header questionAdam H. Kerman
 `- Re: MIME header questionJohn Levine

1
MIME header question

<ss4fjk$3m8$1@dont-email.me>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php?id=289&group=comp.mail.pine#289

 copy link   Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: ahk...@chinet.com (Adam H. Kerman)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine
Subject: MIME header question
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2022 19:21:24 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 15
Message-ID: <ss4fjk$3m8$1@dont-email.me>
Injection-Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2022 19:21:24 -0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="2c2d052e359bbcfa5e8a23a1f7488e28";
logging-data="3784"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18olcmmwBQqQlBFYIj/SIgeg2Fxi6a3kHc="
Cancel-Lock: sha1:4FkEeIFFnt8pPEvw0mJnaAYncjk=
X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010)
 by: Adam H. Kerman - Mon, 17 Jan 2022 19:21 UTC

I asked in another newsgroup.

Eduardo, in your interpretation of the RFCs is declaring 7 bit on
Content Transfer Encoding in conflict with declaring UTF-8 as the
character set?

Logically it seems to me that the two headers should be set jointly and
not UTF-8 without the use of non-ASCII characters if transfer encoding
is marked as 7 bit.

pine/alpine have always parsed for the lowest denomination character set
despite the user's settings. If there are no non-ASCII characters, then
the character set marking is US-ASCII and transfer encoding 7 bit.

I don't know of another client that performs that parsing.

Re: MIME header question

<6d1f8227-e147-1416-e8d1-cfcfb33c3ddc@washington.edu>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php?id=290&group=comp.mail.pine#290

 copy link   Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: cha...@washington.edu (Eduardo Chappa)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine
Subject: Re: MIME header question
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2022 13:15:18 -0700
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 33
Message-ID: <6d1f8227-e147-1416-e8d1-cfcfb33c3ddc@washington.edu>
References: <ss4fjk$3m8$1@dont-email.me>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="07e0039e2b3c5aab85e3a4d42e0e8fd6";
logging-data="5387"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/OAZK1Zyep2/IIwiEMxXrp"
Cancel-Lock: sha1:5B7Bne+ID68b/gRyll/SZytnI8A=
In-Reply-To: <ss4fjk$3m8$1@dont-email.me>
 by: Eduardo Chappa - Mon, 17 Jan 2022 20:15 UTC

On Mon, 17 Jan 2022, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

> Eduardo, in your interpretation of the RFCs is declaring 7 bit on
> Content Transfer Encoding in conflict with declaring UTF-8 as the
> character set?

Dear Adam,

I do not think there is a conflict here. Let me say it in a different way.
The Content-Tranfer-Encoding here just tells you how to process the data.
If could have other values, such as base64, or quoted-printable, so the
value tells you what to do with the data. In the case of 7 bit just
interpret that 7 bit in the charset, in this case utf-8, which actually
means US-ASCII. In other words

7bit intersected with utf-8 = us-ascii,

so you could write us-ascii for the charset in this case, or utf-8. It
seems more like a question of style, not of correctness.

Having said that, I prefer to use us-ascii in this case because more
clients are likely to understand us-ascii instead of utf-8. Alpine did not
get utf-8 handling until very late, while many other clients understood
utf-8, so it was better for pine users to receive a message 7bit in
us-ascii than 7-bit in utf-8, because Pine could not handle the latter.

I doubt that there are Pine users still out there (although I can always
be proven wrong) but it is better to be conservative here in my opinion.

--
Eduardo
https://tinyurl.com/yc377wlh (web)
http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git (Git)

Re: MIME header question

<ss4o9u$e41$7@dont-email.me>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php?id=291&group=comp.mail.pine#291

 copy link   Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!aioe.org!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: ahk...@chinet.com (Adam H. Kerman)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine
Subject: Re: MIME header question
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2022 21:49:50 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 40
Message-ID: <ss4o9u$e41$7@dont-email.me>
References: <ss4fjk$3m8$1@dont-email.me> <6d1f8227-e147-1416-e8d1-cfcfb33c3ddc@washington.edu>
Injection-Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2022 21:49:50 -0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="2c2d052e359bbcfa5e8a23a1f7488e28";
logging-data="14465"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18cJ+ts+5f2rYrg41z9qUtEyegTmNbjNak="
Cancel-Lock: sha1:aaxoggDc8Ru/wWyALEFFZkEVnM4=
X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010)
 by: Adam H. Kerman - Mon, 17 Jan 2022 21:49 UTC

Eduardo Chappa <chappa@washington.edu> wrote:
>On Mon, 17 Jan 2022, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

>>Eduardo, in your interpretation of the RFCs is declaring 7 bit on
>>Content Transfer Encoding in conflict with declaring UTF-8 as the
>>character set?

>I do not think there is a conflict here. Let me say it in a different way.
>The Content-Tranfer-Encoding here just tells you how to process the data.
>If could have other values, such as base64, or quoted-printable, so the
>value tells you what to do with the data. In the case of 7 bit just
>interpret that 7 bit in the charset, in this case utf-8, which actually
>means US-ASCII. In other words

> 7bit intersected with utf-8 = us-ascii,

>so you could write us-ascii for the charset in this case, or utf-8. It
>seems more like a question of style, not of correctness.

Thanks. This is why I asked you. I thought 7 bit was about the
communication channel and not the capabilities of the client and display
on the other end.

If the display interprets MIME headers, does that mean the same 7-bit
character is displayed ignoring the eighth bit or two characters are
displayed in a UTF-8 double byte character? All this time, when my
terminal emulation translation didn't match what was received (I have to
change it manually), I thought I was changed the assumed character set,
not the transfer encoding toggle.

>Having said that, I prefer to use us-ascii in this case because more
>clients are likely to understand us-ascii instead of utf-8. Alpine did not
>get utf-8 handling until very late, while many other clients understood
>utf-8, so it was better for pine users to receive a message 7bit in
>us-ascii than 7-bit in utf-8, because Pine could not handle the latter.

>I doubt that there are Pine users still out there (although I can always
>be proven wrong) but it is better to be conservative here in my opinion.

I certainly agree with you.

Re: MIME header question

<0f5e0651-77c3-7450-68be-1e0eb24a10b8@washington.edu>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php?id=292&group=comp.mail.pine#292

 copy link   Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: cha...@washington.edu (Eduardo Chappa)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine
Subject: Re: MIME header question
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2022 16:29:21 -0700
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 35
Message-ID: <0f5e0651-77c3-7450-68be-1e0eb24a10b8@washington.edu>
References: <ss4fjk$3m8$1@dont-email.me> <6d1f8227-e147-1416-e8d1-cfcfb33c3ddc@washington.edu> <ss4o9u$e41$7@dont-email.me>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII
Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="bb81837bfb03f171acb3133b35447095";
logging-data="22285"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+nut79Ft3Ku6XSpkLfQGoW"
Cancel-Lock: sha1:eu4zNda3gZbdXwf1iyB4Y5sTyKY=
In-Reply-To: <ss4o9u$e41$7@dont-email.me>
 by: Eduardo Chappa - Mon, 17 Jan 2022 23:29 UTC

On Mon, 17 Jan 2022, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

> Thanks. This is why I asked you. I thought 7 bit was about the
> communication channel and not the capabilities of the client and display
> on the other end.
>
> If the display interprets MIME headers, does that mean the same 7-bit
> character is displayed ignoring the eighth bit or two characters are
> displayed in a UTF-8 double byte character? All this time, when my
> terminal emulation translation didn't match what was received (I have to
> change it manually), I thought I was changed the assumed character set,
> not the transfer encoding toggle.

Dear Adam,

I never used the word display to refer to how the message actually
displays on the screen. The headers tell the client what to do internally.
For example, if the content-transfer-encoding were base64, then this tells
the client to decode the encoded blob. Same with 7bit. It just tells to
interpret the 7 bit it finds in the given charset. This will become a
character on screen later on.

I have to acknowledge that I do not understand completely what you are
saying. There is no "transfer encoding toggle" in Alpine, nor there is a
"assumed character set", so I am not exactly sure what you are referring
to, but if I understand you correctly, you are asking what happens to
multibyte characters. Unless you make changes to the default configuration
in Alpine, Alpine will send to the terminal utf-8 codes, which the
terminal will display if it is utf-8 capable. Do you have Alpine and our
terminal configured differently?

--
Eduardo
https://tinyurl.com/yc377wlh (web)
http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git (Git)

Re: MIME header question

<ss4uh0$1u4b$1@gal.iecc.com>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php?id=293&group=comp.mail.pine#293

 copy link   Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!not-for-mail
From: joh...@taugh.com (John Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine
Subject: Re: MIME header question
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2022 23:36:00 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: Taughannock Networks
Message-ID: <ss4uh0$1u4b$1@gal.iecc.com>
References: <ss4fjk$3m8$1@dont-email.me> <6d1f8227-e147-1416-e8d1-cfcfb33c3ddc@washington.edu>
Injection-Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2022 23:36:00 -0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970";
logging-data="63627"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com"
In-Reply-To: <ss4fjk$3m8$1@dont-email.me> <6d1f8227-e147-1416-e8d1-cfcfb33c3ddc@washington.edu>
Cleverness: some
X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010)
Originator: johnl@iecc.com (John Levine)
 by: John Levine - Mon, 17 Jan 2022 23:36 UTC

It appears that Eduardo Chappa <chappa@washington.edu> said:
>On Mon, 17 Jan 2022, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>
>> Eduardo, in your interpretation of the RFCs is declaring 7 bit on
>> Content Transfer Encoding in conflict with declaring UTF-8 as the
>> character set?

I'm not Eduardo, but it's clearly not valid. RFC 2045 says

An encoding type of 7BIT requires that the body
is already in a 7bit mail-ready representation.

Needless to say, UTF-8 is not 7bit mail-ready. I can believe that
some mail programs have tried to make sense of this, but it's utterly
ad-hoc and whatever they do with it is wrong. Maybe stuff declared to
be UTF-8 is in fact just ASCII in a particular message, but I wouldn't
count on it.

> I doubt that there are Pine users still out there (although I can always
> be proven wrong) but it is better to be conservative here in my opinion.

Probably not, although there are plenty of us Alpine users.

R's,
John

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

Re: MIME header question

<ss5diq$46f$1@dont-email.me>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php?id=294&group=comp.mail.pine#294

 copy link   Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: ahk...@chinet.com (Adam H. Kerman)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine
Subject: Re: MIME header question
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2022 03:52:58 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 48
Message-ID: <ss5diq$46f$1@dont-email.me>
References: <ss4fjk$3m8$1@dont-email.me> <6d1f8227-e147-1416-e8d1-cfcfb33c3ddc@washington.edu> <ss4o9u$e41$7@dont-email.me> <0f5e0651-77c3-7450-68be-1e0eb24a10b8@washington.edu>
Injection-Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2022 03:52:58 -0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="5283130521277c8f1995624e77a3dcac";
logging-data="4303"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19dqIhX3bkto7wXzx/LTttqCyYN/ZoX+lA="
Cancel-Lock: sha1:2YQrSDBXaMvaYzs63++bqkiBnBQ=
X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010)
 by: Adam H. Kerman - Tue, 18 Jan 2022 03:52 UTC

Eduardo Chappa <chappa@washington.edu> wrote:
>On Mon, 17 Jan 2022, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

>>Thanks. This is why I asked you. I thought 7 bit was about the
>>communication channel and not the capabilities of the client and display
>>on the other end.

>>If the display interprets MIME headers, does that mean the same 7-bit
>>character is displayed ignoring the eighth bit or two characters are
>>displayed in a UTF-8 double byte character? All this time, when my
>>terminal emulation translation didn't match what was received (I have to
>>change it manually), I thought I was changed the assumed character set,
>>not the transfer encoding toggle.

> I never used the word display to refer to how the message actually
>displays on the screen. The headers tell the client what to do internally.
>For example, if the content-transfer-encoding were base64, then this tells
>the client to decode the encoded blob. Same with 7bit. It just tells to
>interpret the 7 bit it finds in the given charset. This will become a
>character on screen later on.

> I have to acknowledge that I do not understand completely what you are
>saying. There is no "transfer encoding toggle" in Alpine,

Sorry to be unclear. I just meant that the standard allows a choice of
encoding schemes, as you've been discussing.

>nor there is a "assumed character set",

The user can name a character set in .pinerc. Isn't that for the composer
as well as the display? If there are no non-ASCII characters, the MIME
header declares ASCII no matter how the user set this feature.

I liked the fact that alpine declares a lowest denomination character
set.

>so I am not exactly sure what you are referring
>to, but if I understand you correctly, you are asking what happens to
>multibyte characters. Unless you make changes to the default configuration
>in Alpine, Alpine will send to the terminal utf-8 codes, which the
>terminal will display if it is utf-8 capable. Do you have Alpine and our
>terminal configured differently?

I usually have to change the translation between ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8
depending on what Usenet article I'm looking at. alpine isn't my
newsreader. Also, in followup, I liked to get rid of the nonprinting
characters; translation mismatch can make them visible. I post in ASCII
whenever possible.

1
server_pubkey.txt

rocksolid light 0.9.7
clearnet tor