• Observations and information about nntp Mime-Version:, set

    From Peter@occassionally-confused@nospam.co.uk to alt.free.newsservers,news.software.nntp,alt.free.nntp on Wed Apr 26 03:37:52 2023
    From Newsgroup: alt.free.nntp

    Looking at these three lines, why bother with the Mime-version when I can't find anyone who doesn't use Mime version 1.0 (is there another version)?

    What's the difference between the Content-Transfer-Encoding: of 7bit, 8bit
    & quoted-printable? (and please don't say 1 bit as that's not funny)

    Is there a good reason to use a character set that isn't ISO-8859-1?
    (Most seem to use "us-ascii", "UTF-*" & "ISO-8859-1".)

    Mime-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

    Mime-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

    MIME-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

    Mime-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

    MIME-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

    MIME-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

    Mime-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

    MIME-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
    --- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From legalize+jeeves@legalize+jeeves@mail.xmission.com (Richard) to alt.free.newsservers,news.software.nntp,alt.free.nntp on Wed Apr 26 06:25:40 2023
    From Newsgroup: alt.free.nntp

    [Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

    Peter <occassionally-confused@nospam.co.uk> spake the secret code <u2a2p5$17h7q$1@dont-email.me> thusly:

    Looking at these three lines, why bother with the Mime-version when I can't >find anyone who doesn't use Mime version 1.0 (is there another version)?

    What's the difference between the Content-Transfer-Encoding: of 7bit, 8bit
    & quoted-printable? (and please don't say 1 bit as that's not funny)

    Is there a good reason to use a character set that isn't ISO-8859-1?
    (Most seem to use "us-ascii", "UTF-*" & "ISO-8859-1".)

    All your questions are answered in detail by the RFCs that cover MIME;
    start with the wikipenis(TM) article: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME>
    --
    "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline>
    The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals-wiki.org>
    The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org>
    Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
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  • From Ralph Fox@-rf-nz-@-.invalid to alt.free.newsservers,news.software.nntp,alt.free.nntp on Thu Apr 27 07:02:40 2023
    From Newsgroup: alt.free.nntp

    On Wed, 26 Apr 2023 03:37:52 +0100, Peter wrote:

    Looking at these three lines, why bother with the Mime-version when I can't find anyone who doesn't use Mime version 1.0 (is there another version)?

    The presence or absence of this header indicates whether the message
    does or does not support the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
    (MIME). See RFC1521 section 3 or RFC2045 section 4.

    You will be able to find messages which do not have a Mime-version
    header, as well as messages which do have one.

    ____
    REFERENCES:

    RFC1521 section 3 : <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1521#section-3>
    RFC2045 section 4 : <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2045#section-4>
    --
    Kind regards
    Ralph

    +|++-a+|b+u-a+| +|+#b+| +|b+a-U+<-a+|-a+|

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  • From gof-cut-this-news@gof-cut-this-news@cut-this-chmurka.net.invalid (Adam W.) to alt.free.newsservers,news.software.nntp,alt.free.nntp on Fri Apr 28 02:31:08 2023
    From Newsgroup: alt.free.nntp

    In news.software.nntp Peter <occassionally-confused@nospam.co.uk> wrote:

    Looking at these three lines, why bother with the Mime-version when I can't find anyone who doesn't use Mime version 1.0 (is there another version)?

    When I experimented with it (a long time ago), one newsreader (I'm not
    sure now, but it might have been alpine) ignored Content-Type when Mime-Version was not specified. It made sense, as presence of Mime-Version says that the message is MIME-compliant.

    What's the difference between the Content-Transfer-Encoding: of 7bit, 8bit
    & quoted-printable? (and please don't say 1 bit as that's not funny)

    You can encode the content during transfer with various encoding schemes.

    7bit means that there are no 8-bit characters in the content.

    8-bit means that there are 8-bit characters and they are passed as is.
    It's probably OK for all modern server implementations, as they're 8-bit clean.

    Quoted-Printable encoding quotes non-safe characters in printable form by changing them to three-character representation, where first character is
    = (equal sign) and two following characters encode the problematic byte in
    a hexadecimal form.

    You might also encounter base64, which codes groups of three bytes (8-bit) into groups of four 6-bit codes, represented by uppercase and lowercase letters, digits and some symbols -- basically, printable and safe stuff.

    Is there a good reason to use a character set that isn't ISO-8859-1?
    (Most seem to use "us-ascii", "UTF-*" & "ISO-8859-1".)

    It might be used for historic reasons. On Polish groups you'll encounter, apart from utf-8, also iso-8859-2 (and sometimes windows-1250).

    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

    ...and format=flowed means that the message can be reformatted during
    display. See: https://joeclark.org/ffaq.html

    Adam
    --- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Rick@rick@none.biz to alt.free.newsservers,news.software.nntp,alt.free.nntp on Tue May 9 06:12:21 2023
    From Newsgroup: alt.free.nntp

    gof-cut-this-news@cut-this-chmurka.net.invalid (Adam W.) wrote in news:u2fb5c$bsr$1$arnold@news.chmurka.net:

    In news.software.nntp Peter <occassionally-confused@nospam.co.uk>
    wrote:

    Looking at these three lines, why bother with the Mime-version when I
    can't find anyone who doesn't use Mime version 1.0 (is there another
    version)?

    When I experimented with it (a long time ago), one newsreader (I'm not
    sure now, but it might have been alpine) ignored Content-Type when Mime-Version was not specified. It made sense, as presence of
    Mime-Version says that the message is MIME-compliant.

    What's the difference between the Content-Transfer-Encoding: of 7bit,
    8bit & quoted-printable? (and please don't say 1 bit as that's not
    funny)

    You can encode the content during transfer with various encoding
    schemes.

    7bit means that there are no 8-bit characters in the content.

    8-bit means that there are 8-bit characters and they are passed as is.
    It's probably OK for all modern server implementations, as they're
    8-bit clean.

    Quoted-Printable encoding quotes non-safe characters in printable form
    by changing them to three-character representation, where first
    character is = (equal sign) and two following characters encode the problematic byte in a hexadecimal form.

    You might also encounter base64, which codes groups of three bytes
    (8-bit) into groups of four 6-bit codes, represented by uppercase and lowercase letters, digits and some symbols -- basically, printable and
    safe stuff.

    Is there a good reason to use a character set that isn't ISO-8859-1?
    (Most seem to use "us-ascii", "UTF-*" & "ISO-8859-1".)

    It might be used for historic reasons. On Polish groups you'll
    encounter, apart from utf-8, also iso-8859-2 (and sometimes
    windows-1250).

    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

    ...and format=flowed means that the message can be reformatted during display. See: https://joeclark.org/ffaq.html

    Adam

    Clap! Clap! You pass.
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