[Info-vax] VMS-based InfoServer

[JF Mezei]

VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:

> You explain what the fuck is gained by turning an "equal sign" into
> "equal sign 3D" and MAYBE, just MAYBE, I'll reconsider.  So far to
> date, I have never found any text requiring encoding -- let alone,
> quoted-pukeable. 


Jean-François Mezei

The c cedilla would have easily been represented by the ISO Latin 1 c
cedilla. But because NNTP standards were done in the USA who thoughht
ASCII was 7 bits, transmission of 8 bit values is not in the standard,
so instead of changing the standard to allow 8 but values, they decided
to come up with this quoted printable contraption.

It also allows microsoft to send paragraphs as one very long line that
can be reflowed by the recicpient (by ending each physical line with an
= sign which tells the client to join the next line).