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Re: RFC 2047 and gatewaying

2003-01-12 20:12:23

In <3E1F0C21(_dot_)4060302(_at_)Sonietta(_dot_)blilly(_dot_)com> Bruce Lilly 
<blilly(_at_)erols(_dot_)com> writes:

D. J. Bernstein wrote:
In a world that makes any use of RFC 2047, displaying text correctly
means identifying the locations where RFC 2047 encoding is used.

Display (as opposed to generation) does not require information about
header field syntax; RFC 2047 explicitly provides for considering
unrecognized fields as unstructured *for the purpose of display*.

Not so.

If you see the header
        Foorbar: XXX (=?iso8859-1?q?=A3-=A3?=) YYY
then if it is a structured header you are supposed to decode the
encoded-word, and if it is an unstructured header you are not supposed to
decode it.

If you don't know whether it is structured or unstructured then you are,
officially, stuck. In practice, most implementations will take a heuristic
decision to decode it, but they are not complying with the standard if
they do so.

Some people consider that the fact that RFC 2047 puts implementors into
these impossible situations is a "design flaw" in RFC 2047. Note that this
is not a Usefor problem. It exists in email already.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: chl(_at_)clw(_dot_)cs(_dot_)man(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk      Snail: 5 
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