Keith, I just don't think it works.
The hard reality is that there are lots of mail transport agents out
there that think they have license to mess with line breaks. If
everything gets converted to CRLF format before transport, I predict
that LOTS of existing transport agents will break, badly, because
they've suddenly started getting CRLF where they expected whatever the
local standard was.
I believe that not breaking existing transport has always been one of
the highest goals of MIME, which is why I object to this redefinition of
quoted-printable. The existing definition, in the current MIME
document, does not break transport; that's why I propose to keep it,
with the possible addition of explanatory prose of the kind I posted
earlier.
I hate to say it, but if we make the proposed changes to
quoted-printable, I'll be hard-pressed to consider the document as
standard-ready, because we don't have a CLUE as to how many existing
transport agents will be broken by the new definition. I'm not calling
it a show-stopper, but I do think it is the kind of thing that would
make us want to step back and wait a couple months before going back to
the IESG. -- Nathaniel