From: Ned Freed <Ned(_dot_)Freed(_at_)innosoft(_dot_)com>
Subject: Re: some typological errors
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 19:18:46 -0700 (PDT)
Well, all I can is that you're wrong. Both base64 and quoted-printable are
designed to be 100% invertible and loss-free. If you have a problem with
quoted-printable it is because of bugs in your MIME implementation.
I know QP is loss-free if it is implemented correctly. But I'm not a
discussing generic case but the example in 3.1.4 of the new S/MIME
draft and a paragraph of RFC 2015.
Quoted from RFC 2015.
Though not required, it is generally a good idea to use Quoted-
Printable encoding in the first step (writing out the data to be
signed in MIME canonical format) if any of the lines in the data
begin with "From ", and encode the "F". This will avoid an MTA
inserting a ">" in front of the line, thus invalidating the
signature!
If this step is applied to ISO 2022 text carelessly(e.g ASCII part of
"From " is encoded but ISO 2022 part of "=" is not encoded), ISO 2022
text encoded with QP might not be decoded.
My point is that the example IS confusing. I think, to avoid
misunderstanding, some notes are necessary.
All in all, QP is not efficient, in Ned's word, to ISO 2022.
I've had this noted as something to fix in the
next revision of RFC1847 for quite some time now.
Thank you, Ned. I'm waiting for the revision.
--Kazu