Re: Minutes of the SMTP meeting in St. Louis

[Mark Crispin <mrc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greg -

     I agree with you (on the need to implement parsers for Content-Type,
Content-Decoding, 3 decoding routines, and at least 1 encoding routine).
Actually, I think that you only need to implement 1 decoding routine (quoted
printable) and leave Base-64 for later [?? is this true??] support of binary
files [?? I may be wrong on this ??].  I thought too that hex (half-ASCII) has
been dropped, although I haven't read the new draft cover-to-cover yet.

     But, I think that the effort to implement this is considerably less than
the cost of changing the MTA infrastructure and furthermore puts the burden on
those who want/need this support.  Also, it has the advantage of allowing an
individual to bring his support with him when in parts of the world that are
locked into a 7-bit infrastructure.

     That is, I foresee a proliferation of "Euro-safe" UA's (Euro-MH, Euro-MM,
etc.) that run on unmodified MTA platforms.  I would think, even as a
European, that I would much rather install my own local UA on a new X box than
dig in and fix every version of sendmail (particularly when I don't always
have sources) that crosses my path.

-- Mark --