[leafnode-list] Re: Base64 coding in list messages

[Matthias Andree]

Whiskers <catwheezel at operamail.com> writes:

> I've already raised this once before (in the thread that began as "User 
> authentication" on 16th Sept and changed to "corrupted base64 list 
> message").
>
> Today, my message in "Fetchnews process takes very long" came through with 
> the same symptoms (ie "[Error decoding BASE64]" from my email client, 
> thanks to my using the program 'FreePOP' to scrape messages from a webmail 
> service which decodes the BAse64).
>
> When it left me, the message had these headers:
>
>     Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>     Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
> but on arrival from the mailing-list, these had changed to:
>
>     Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>     Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
>
> This is only the third list message I've noticed this happen to; none of
> the others get a 'Base64' encoding.  
>
> This is a curiosity rather than a problem, but I'd be interested if anyone 
> knows why this happens from time to time.

Generally speaking, quoted-printable or base64 will usually happen
whenever umlauts are involved - or other characters that don't fit into
7bit (I'm avoiding them in this message). In the message you sent it was
the German oe umlaut in the greeting that you had quoted from Torsten's
message.

I stand by my former point that the problem is with the interaction of
Operamail and FreePOP. The latter fetches the header and the decoded
body, but does not rewrite the Content-Transfer-Encoding from "base64"
to either "8bit" or "binary".  Since you said switching service were no
option for you, it's probably best to have FreePOP fixed.

HTH

-- 
Matthias Andree