[Info-vax] VMS-based InfoServer

[MetaEd]

On Aug 4, 4:09 pm, "John Reagan" <johnrrea... at earthlink.net> wrote:
> you need someway to denote a real equal sign.

This is not what many people consider to be the dumb part of quoted-
printable.

> Since the format for quoted-printable is an equal sign followed by two hex
> digits

This is. The use of equals sign as the prefix escape made the
resulting 7-bit message hard to read using legacy software.

More common prefix escape characters such as backslash, which would
have been less problematic, were passed over for use in quoted-
printable for good reason. At the time, quoted-printable had to
survive translation to and from EBCDIC, due to the architecture of
some of the major hubs. Those of us who were BITnet techreps had
direct experience with this.

Cheers!