From: suhonen@jalka.jyu.fi (Timo Suhonen)
Subject: Re: 4.0.5 and mail
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Department of Biology of Physical
	Activity
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 07:17:13 GMT

[I hope you can still read my "English", although the level of discussion
 is rapidly going over my skills]

[I know this is good habit staring a discussion just before leaving the
 news for two weeks, but I couldn't resist. So if you want to write,
 please mail me 'cause news articles will be expired when I come back
 to work]

In my previous post I should have written, that I only ment mail body, not
the header. The header should be 7-bit.

vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver) writes:

   The facts of the matter are these, some important and some not:

       1. RFC-822 requires that the 8th bit be cleared on all mail and headers.
	   It is not a matter of "allowed," but of "required."

From discussions with Roberts@sgi I have now learned that. I had 
misunderstood said RFC earlier.

       2. standard BSD sendmail has cleared the 8th bit for years.  This
	   means there are 10's of thousands of 8-bit clearing mail hosts
	   and relays directly connected to the Internet.

Oh boy! with this attitude we would still be hanging in the woods B-)
As an advanced computer company SGI should look forward, not backward.
Of cause SGI's mail should cope with existing systems, but there should
be a way to go aroud it. Like an extra command line switch for sendmail
or something alike.

       3. it is easy to build sendmail so that it does not clear the 8th
	   bit.  Such a sendmail with Mail User Agents that generate
	   8-bit-unclean text and headers makes the system non-comformant
	   with current standards.

But between such non-comformant systems 8-bit mails are OK. More and more
sites handles 8-bit mails correctly (i.e. don't clear 8th bit).

       4. such a non-conformant sendmail cannot reliably deliver 8-bit email.

I don't think occasional problems are big problems. It can be a problem
in in other languages than Finnish (I really don't know). I receive
daily 8-bit mails with 8th bit cleared. And text is still readable;
not too good but readable. 

It's true I have not tested the 8 bit mail to (and from) California
well, just two or three times (and it happened to work every time).

Occasional broken mails can be send again. From text mails you clearly
see if it's broken or not. I'm not sending 8 bit data or binaries
with 8 bit mail, just text.

	 (b) If you use 8-bit characters in a From: or To: line and your
	   message happens to pass through an old mail relay (as in #a
	   above), then your addresses will suddenly become nonsense.

As I wrote, headers should be kept 7 bit as long as a 8 bit extension is
widely accepted.

	 (d) there is no way for the sending and receiving machines
	   to know they are using the same 8-bit character set.  I
	   understand there is more than one such character set, and that
	   the character set used by the "just send 8bit" crowd is not
	   appropriate for Asia, no matter how fine it is for Europe and
	   the Americas.  In other words, "just send 8bits" works
	   for small parts of the world, but is not an international
	   solution.

Actually there is a way to know the character set: You can add extra
lines to headers:

X-CharSet: ISO_8859-1
X-Char-Esc: 29

Lines like above are added to every send mail by IDA-sendmail. So the
character set is no problem. And with this esc definiton, the mailer
can strip all escape codes from mails. 

	 (e) Sgi.com relays a substantial amount of mail.  The sendmail
	   binary on sgi.com bounces any message with bytes in headers
	   that look like control characters, regardless of the 8th bit.

Header lines should be kept 7 bit.

   Personally, I don't get excited about conforming or not to standards.
   All that  matters to me is whether things work.  The simple fact is
   that "just send 8bits" does not and cannot work.  It does not ensure
   that what the author wrote arrives at the reader's screen.  On the
   other hand, there are existing standards and implementations to do
   work.  In the absense of the dishonesty and parochialism, the choice
   would be clear and not controversial.

I think the biggest problem here is that computers and networks are
Born in the USA (sorry Bruce) and you don't need 8 bit characters there.
I want 8 bit mails to daily mails inside Finland to the sites I know
can accept 8 bit mails. To USA or any other country I'll (and everyone
I know) send 7 bit mail. As far as I know English language do not need
8 bit characters and English is the defacto language in international
mails and USENET newsgroups (BTW: news are delivered 8 bit in Finland B-).

To write it shortly: If I write toi my friend to maths department I'd
like to use real characters, not {}|'s for scandinavian vovels.

   I think that Silicon Graphics should make available a broken sendmail
   that passes 8-bits, as well as a MIME system.  If I'm right, eventaully
   users will figure out that "just send 8bits" is a fraud.  However,
   neither of those can be made available immediately, even if I convince
   everyone necessary.  They must wait for a release to ride.

I really agree that SGI should make 8 bit sendmail available!!! 

   The people in the Internet community who are telling people to "just
   send 8bits" are knowingly ignoring the facts above.  They are knowingly
   causing people to think things they know are false.  They are
   dishonest, and should be dealt with as such.

I'm not ignoring facts you wrote about (thanks). And I'm not telling
people to send 8 bit mails to anyone. (I have taught people how to
use mail and news systems in our HP (where the 8 bit mail works).
I have taught them that they should write first 7 bit and if it turns
out that 8 bit works then use what ever they want to use). BTW: I'm
not writing 8 bit mails to international news groups although my news
connection accepts 8 bit news articles. Actually I'm not writing 8 bit
news articles to finnish news groups, because everyone can't get them
8 bit from their news servers.

I think users are (or can be taught to be) wise enough not to use 8 bit
where it does not work. You should trust users.
--
Timo               "I am logged in, therefore I am"              Suhonen
"There is no need for the President of the United States to be smart" -HST
  Opinions(?) are mine (if not stolen), NOT those of Univ. of Jyvaskyla.