[imp] 8-bit transfer (was: IMP, Outlook and Hotmail)

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting Joseph Brennan <brennan at columbia.edu>:

>> Read RFC 2822
>
> OK.  Sec 2.1, second para, says
>
>    Note: This standard specifies that messages are made up of characters
>    in the US-ASCII range of 1 through 127.  There are other documents,
>    specifically the MIME document series [RFC2045, RFC2046, RFC2047,
>    RFC2048, RFC2049], that extend this standard to allow for values
>    outside of that range.  Discussion of those mechanisms is not within
>    the scope of this standard.
>
> This is fairly similar wording to sec 1.1, second para, which says
>
>    This standard specifies a syntax only for text messages.  In
>    particular, it makes no provision for the transmission of images,
>    audio, or other sorts of structured data in electronic mail messages.
>    There are several extensions published, such as the MIME document
>    series [RFC2045, RFC2046, RFC2049], which describe mechanisms for the
>    transmission of such data through electronic mail, either by
>    extending the syntax provided here or by structuring such messages to
>    conform to this syntax.  Those mechanisms are outside of the scope of
>    this standard.
>
>
> If you read this to say that 8-bit mail is not allowed, is MIME not
> allowed either?

Yeah, but later in this RFC it seemingly conflicts with itself and  
then later, it conflicts again.  Urgh.  The only obvious thing about  
this discussion is that the RFCs are not the model of clarity.

As an exercise, I wrote some basic 8bitmime support into imp.   
However, the limiting factor is that the smtp driver in Mail doesn't  
presently support 8bitmime sending.  I have sent in some patches and  
will work on this further when versions of Mail (and Net_SMTP) are  
released with the necessary support.

http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/6645

michael

-- 
___________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at horde.org]