ietf-822
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Re: Minutes of the RFC 822extensions WG in Columbus

1993-04-08 12:12:48

I'd say it's better to bite the bullet now and work out how to allow
them.  Using the rfc 1342 mechanisms seems appropriate. The only
problem that occurs to me is the fact that many of these filenames
don't necessarily have any particular character set associated with
them, so the use of an "unknown" character set seems called for.

This is close to what was suggested.  The problem was one of backward
compatability to implementations which are not prepared to encounter
an encoded word.  They will likely just send the literal string, such
as get =?unknown?Q?/usr/spool/xyz/ne=3d=3cfoo? for FTP.

The flip side is that any such implementation which encountered an 8
bit character would not be able to do anything anyway so this is not a
big lose, so long as 7 bit filenames would be subject to a new
restriction that prevent the use of quoted-printable.

If someone from the meeting can better articulate the reasons this
proposal was rejected, please jump in.  I personally support the idea,
but have not had to use 8 bit characters in my MIME use yet. 

Greg Vaudreuil