At 10.22 2/23/95, Harald(_dot_)T(_dot_)Alvestrand(_at_)uninett(_dot_)no wrote:
in some places, like Norway and Sweden, barring all 8-bit transfers
is simply a losing proposition.
So, I believe your draft (or the 822 AS, or the SMTP AS) should
describe the various ways of punting on the issue:
- Ignoring the protocol violation and handing the message on
- Stripping the 8th bit to make the message conformant
- Make the message text/plain; charset=locally-defined-default
(most appropriate when SMTP is used as a submission protocol)
and applying a c-t-e
- Rejecting the message if it is not MIME-tagged, otherwise passing
it on (accepting c-t-e binary or c-t-e 8bit)
I have to tell you a story from sweden, heard yesterday:
Other Guy: "We have 8bit ISO-8859-1 as the standard mail backbone
between the top-300 presidents in this very-very-large
company".
Me:"But, this small only-3000 people part of your very-large company
have chosen to run MIME instead to be able to follow all standards."
OG:"So, what do you mean by this?"
Me:"I can not see why you are breaking the standard by sending 8bit
characters, and also miss the opportunity to send attachments in
a proper manner."
OG:"But sending ISO-8859-1 IS the standard!"
Me:"No, this RFC-821 says....bla....bla,
Once more, why are you breaking this RFC-821?"
OG:"Well, the gateway from Micorsoft Mail to SMTP sold by
Microsoft, and the Sun Sendmail behaves this way."
Me:"YUK"
++++ Now I start being really in the mood, be prepared +++++
So, in practical life these two companies (mostly because they are
bigger than everyone else) is a real pain just because their BAD BAD
behaviour is becoming an industry standard by itself! I have SO many
persons in sweden sitting behind 7-bit transports which gets
bit-stripped mail, and also these guys using 8bit mailers ask me
why their mail is garbage (after the 8th bit is stripped).
I was glad when mr Onion wrote this paper once again stating that
sending 8bit mail is a bad thing! This is the paper I have to have
to go to the swedish government and standardizing commitee which
now is going to write a special paper about this (banning the use
of 8bit characters in SMTP).
Please, stay with the banning of 8bit character mail!
If you have a mailer, like a Sun Sendmail or Microsoft gateway,
install Emil or something else to create real messages.
Today all of us running proper SMTP have to install these
gateways to create MIME messages when messages arrive. Why do
we have to do that? It's they who are bad!
I will very soon start _rejecting_ messages with 8bit information
in them! This is now the only alternative left as people are
not reading RFC-821. I am hoping to be able to install the same
thing in central relay mailers in sweden. The war has just started!
- Patrik - Today installing Emil once more to be able to
receive mail to a company running MIME just because
their costomers refuses to send everything else than
8bit Mail.....I hate this!