[Info-vax] VMS-based InfoServer

[MetaEd]

On Aug 5, 7:27 am, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber... at comcast.net>
wrote:
> I'm not purposely sending "quoted-printable".  I don't encode anything.
> Perhaps you are objecting to the Mozilla/Thunderbirdmail/news client
> and whatever it's doing.

I did not see any complaint or objection to the format of your
messages. I did not see a claim that any message from you was sent
quoted-printable. I don't know of a damn thing wrong with Thunderbird.

The message that attracted complaints was from Karl. He apparently
submitted it to Google Groups through http://groups.google.com/ using
the Firefox browser.

The discussion of Thunderbird is a useless digression, except that it
served to illustrate two points.

First, if you are going to violate the protocol standard, and you do
not want annoy the VAXman, violate it by transmitting 8-bit ASCII, not
by transmitting quoted-printable.

Second, 8-bit ASCII will mostly do the right thing, when it is not
actually breaking legacy code. But 8-bit ASCII doesn't magically cure
the problem of compatibility with a legacy newsreader that does not
know what to do with an 8-bit ASCII code. It is still not going to
result in the right character being displayed on the terminal, unless
you accidentally have an 8-bit clean newsreader and accidentally use
the same 8-bit code page on your terminal as was used on the origin
terminal to compose the message. Some people see the degree sign;
others see the question mark. YMMV.