In <20030211083022(_dot_)3b33bf90(_dot_)moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>
Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> writes:
and note that I didn't say 'indefinitely'. but lots of people keep old mail
around. while it's hard to argue that people should keep buying 5.25" disk
drives for the sake of reading their old floppies (partially because the
medium is essentially useless for storage of new things), it's a bit easier
to argue that MUAs should contain a bit of extra code to handle slight
differences in message format that were once widely used.
But again, not for ever. Remember that we are talking particularly of RFC
2047 here. If in 50 years time you come across an old email with RFC 2047
in its headers, and it is 25 years since the last MUA that understood it
had died, all is still not lost because you can still read the ascii and
decode it by hand. And if Google is still keeping articles that old
around, it will probably provide downcoding as part of its service.
But I would hate to be faced with converting punycode by hand :-( .
--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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