Re: ZMailer 8BITMIME vs. Mercury

[Matti Aarnio <mea@nic.funet.fi>]

> What's the point of zmailer rewriting messages?  I'd much prefer if my
> MTA just passed messages with no change whatsoever.  That's simple,
> safe, and easy to understand.  The MUA can do mime or whatever else the
> user wants.

	If everybody would stick to 7-bit transport that would not
	cause any problems, but when message bodies are encoded in
	8-bit bytes (that is, characters that have binary code of
	128 or higher), then there will appear a need to do rewriting
	when that message reaches a place where it is coming in from
	8-bit world into some old 7-bit mailer which bluntly STRIPS
	the high bit off when receiving email...

	That isn't entirely a moot point, even I have such a machine
	which has 7-bit -stripper sendmail!  (I plan to change it to
	run Linux+Zmailer some year soon, though..)

	It would be ideal to have an 8-bit-world, but we don't have it
	quite yet...

	I will return to the original email about MIME-bugs soon,
	I suspect there are some bugs in that code, or at least at
	the version which is running here at  nic.funet.fi  (which
	usually is NOT my lattest test version..)

		/Matti Aarnio	<mea@nic.funet.fi> <mea@utu.fi>