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Re: printable multibyte encodings

1992-12-18 07:21:42
On Fri, 18 Dec 92 10:58:25 +0900, 
erik(_at_)poel(_dot_)juice(_dot_)or(_dot_)jp (Erik M. van der Poel) said:

        Erik> In email, there are two basic requirements:

        Erik>   (1) transmissibility
        Erik>   (2) readability

        Erik> MIME's Q-P and Base64 take care of (1), but until many people 
actually
        Erik> have MIME decoders installed, (2) suffers.  It seems to me that 
this
        Erik> is the raison d'&e>tre of Keld's "mnemonic" method.  In reality, 
we
        Erik> probably have to strike some sort of balance between (1) and (2).
        Erik> It'll be interesting to see just how fast MIME decoders get 
installed,
        Erik> and whether readability will then become less of a requirement.


Actually, the burden of (2) resides with the composer: this is what
the multipart/alternative content-type is for. Any multibyte text that
basically resembles ascii should probably have an alternative,
readable-by-7-bit-users representation included, at least until MIME
decoders proliferate.

This has the advantage of giving us readability and transmissibility
without revising the spec :)

-Rens
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 /__) /__  /| / (    |  J. Laurens Troost    Lehman Brothers Technical Services
/  \ (___ / |/ __)   |  *Opinions expressed herein are mine. Mine, I tell you!*
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