From: Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>
Cc: David Kuehling <dvdkhlng@gmx.de>,
rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org, pmr@pajato.com
Subject: Re: RMAIL bails out with coding-system-error
Date: Sun, 05 May 2002 17:11:50 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <iluk7qi6349.fsf@extundo.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.1020505163538.25147B-100000@is> (Eli Zaretskii's message of "Sun, 5 May 2002 16:45:31 +0300 (IDT)")
Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il> writes:
> On Sun, 5 May 2002, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>
>> Is this X-Coding-System header actually used by RMAIL for anything?
>
> Yes, it is used to set the value of buffer-file-coding-system when you
> read the same message later. Without this, RMAIL would have to
> repeatedly decode messages each time you display it; this would be a
> nuisance with long messages.
>
> In addition, recording an encoding allows features like
> rmail-redecode-body, that lets users override bogus MIME headers.
I wasn't clear, I meant: Is it used for anything upon receiving a
message with that header from the network via email?
Using it internally after receiving the message is OK, I think.
>> I think the header is a very bad idea and it should be removed. There
>> is a standard for interchanging non-ASCII data using email, and it is
>> called MIME. Inventing something new that is specific to emacs (and
>> can even depend on which additional packages are installed..) is a
>> perfect method to cause problems for users and make people reject the
>> entire software because it doesn't follow standards.
>
> IIRC, the X-Coding-System header is only written to the BABYL-formatted
> files Emacs keeps for itself, and then only in the summary part. What
> kinds of problems do you envision with this, given that headers beginning
> with "X-" can be used by applications for their own purposes?
None. I thought RMAIL decided how to display an incoming email
depending on the X-Coding-System header. This is what would cause
problems.
Of course, RMAIL should probably make sure that X-Coding-System is
removed when forwarding messages, so other RMAIL instances isn't
confused. Or at least remove it on incoming messages before adding
the new header locally.
> However, I'm not saying that this is the only possible way of recording
> the message encoding. If there are more standard methods that can
> support the same features, we could consider switching to them.
For internal purposes, whatever works is OK. Switching to MIME for
the internal representation seems like work with little gain.
>> Gnus provides
>> two supposedly standalone packages called Message and Emacs MIME which
>> provides MIME encoding and decoding, can't RMAIL use them?
>
> The difference between RMAIL and Gnus is that RMAIL stores only the
> decoded messages. It doesn't keep the undecoded copy around. But I
> don't know if this should prevent the change of the kind you suggest.
Ok. I misunderstood the purposes of the header.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2002-05-05 15:11 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <87bsbw87pq.fsf@snail.pool>
2002-05-05 5:34 ` RMAIL bails out with coding-system-error Richard Stallman
2002-05-05 10:57 ` David Kuehling
2002-05-05 11:21 ` Simon Josefsson
2002-05-05 13:45 ` Eli Zaretskii
2002-05-05 15:11 ` Simon Josefsson [this message]
2002-05-05 17:26 ` Eli Zaretskii
2002-05-06 9:29 ` Kai Großjohann
2002-05-05 13:35 ` Eli Zaretskii
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