On 23 Aug 1995 16:31:23 EDT, you said:
Why is there no "7BITMIME"?
Umm.. Unless I've misread the RFC's, if you're handed an 8BIT non-mime,
you've been handed an illegal message. So there's 2 possibilities, either
the message you're handed is 7BIT-something in which case we dont care
what the receiving end is, as it's legal RFC821/822, or you're handed an
8BITMIME. Now, in the latter case, there's 2 sub-cases - either the recieving
end also does 8BITMIME, in which case you send it as is, or it doesn't - and
you smash it to 7BIT with Quoted-Printable or Base64 or something. And as
it turns out, the rules for conversion are identical whether the catching
end is 7BIT or 7BITMIME.
And that's why there's no 7BITMIME - there's nothing to gain there.
Valdis Kletnieks
Computer Systems Engineer
Virginia Tech