At 10:38 AM -0700 6/6/03, Russ Allbery wrote:
Nick Simicich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Just as a point:  This is a really poorly thought out RFC.  You might
> want to decode those in your MTA or mailing list manager before
> forwarding them to your subscribers.  You *can't* safely do so.

Why do you want to do that?  Certainly you're not allowed to do that
within that RFC because doing so would break the e-mail protocol.  The
whole reason why RFC 2047 exists is because 8-bit characters are not
allowed in RFC 822 and RFC 2822 headers.

Let's say I have an archive of email messages to a list, and want to create an index by subject, or to enable searches by subject. How am I supposed to do this if the Subject header is encoded, and I'm not supposed to decode it except for display?


Similar problem with Base64-encoded message bodies (jeez, I hate Outlook).

I agree with Nick here: ISO-encoded subject lines are a "solution" to a non-problem, where the people putting for the solution apparently didn't think through most of the consequences of what they were proposing.


-Brent


--
Brent Chapman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

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