Kurt Hackenberg wrote in
 <[email protected]>:
 |On Tue, Aug 26, 2025 at 01:26:16AM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |
 |>But normally, i am pretty sure mutt also acts like that, if you
 |>let it, a From_ line (or, more likely, any "^From " regardless)
 |>causes a c-t-e to kick in, likely quoted-printable.
 |
 |(That is, use quoted-printable to hide a message "From " line from
 |future mbox damage.)
 |
 |I've only seen Apple Mail do that. Microsoft Outlook doesn't do it,
 |and Mutt doesn't.
 |
 |For example, this message was composed by Mutt.
 |
 |>From from from
 |
 |Look at this message in raw form somehow. There's no encoding.

You configured it like that.

  # ~/.muttrc
  ...
  set sendmail="~/src/sendmail.sh"
  ...

  #!/bin/sh -
  # ~/src/sendmail.sh
  cat >> /tmp/.src-sendmail-sent

Gives me

  From steffen@localhost Wed Aug 27 21:17:02 2025
  Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2025 21:17:02 +0200
  From: Steffen <steffen@localhost>
  To: do@del
  Subject: hi
  Message-ID: <aK9ZruHs1g0tay1M@kent>
  MIME-Version: 1.0
  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
  Content-Disposition: inline
  Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
  Status: RO
  Content-Length: 34
  Lines: 4

  Hello

  =46rom line is bogus
  Ciao.

And that is what i would expect from any mailer.

I mean, heck, shit is everywhere.  The "current thing to go to" is
specifying an UTF-8 character set, but transmitting via text/plain
as 7-bit .. you know.  Can be seen everywhere at the moment.

The thing *for me* is that, if i use S/MIME or OpenPGP the mailer
*has* to use a non-8-bit MIME encoding, to ensure reproducability.
I personally have no problem with that, you know.

The thing (for me) is that *all* normal mails that come in here
(with practically the sole exception of commit logs of the BSDs)
have so many headers, and often several MIME parts, that i still
could pour the buffet onto that forgotten Microsoft employer
who was talking that UTF-8 extension with that nice raw email
projected onto the .. you know, "display".
No normal person on this planet wants to look at raw email.
Possibly with the exception of developers who "hack".

You need a MUA for abstraction.
(With the new RFCs on end-to-end security and header protection
.. even more so.  I hope they fly, and i hope i live long enough
to finally get the MUA i maintain over that hill.)
(Not to talk about all the images etc that are anyway base64.)

So.  If you need a MUA for abtraction, i personally give a shit
on how it looks at the raw level.  The only thing is that
content-transfer-encoding may be a bit of a bloat compared to
8-bit.  Yes.

So then.  Unfortunate shit decisions in the past.

But if you follow Dr. Werner Fink, ;), and honour that the thing
actually always was pretty clear, in that there must be
a completely empty line before "^From_" (mutt fails), and that
there must be at least one unspecified (POSIX) or two (Date: and
From:, RFC 822) header lines thereafter, and that the From_ line
as such has a very specific layout (in granted several, but well
known versions), then the From_ line separator is not *that* easy
to mistreat (mutt fails).  I mean, compare for example with the
UTF-8 BOM!  *Much* harder to mistreat!

'Thing is also, you know, if the IETF would really care (i am
very far out, IETF), they could define a for example 8bitsafe
encoding, which would be like 8bit but would know about an escape
character, and escape only the escape "^From_", and maybe C1
and C2 control characters (because why not, given their horror,
especially of that XML and JSON guy; both really bad things,
especially the latter's string; not only IMHO).
It is easy.  Maybe they should have done so from the beginning,
given that the ^From_ problem was a very well known problem, all
the time.  But it fits their bill, and noone can change that.

So, in short.
I will not implement text/flowed aka RFC 3676 until after the
MIME rewrite.  It would require a fork(2)ed filter until then,
just like is implemented for the HTML viewer.  And i will not
quote emails of other people with such an algorithm regardless
of whether they used flowed, or not.  If i read emails (via
web archive) on a mini computer, i have to turn the display,
otherwise it will not fit anyway.

 --End of <[email protected]>

Ciao, and greetings from (and to!?!) Germany,

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

Reply via email to