Re: base64 behavior is not MIME compliant

[Marc Horowitz <marc@mit.edu>]

"Richard M. Stallman" <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>> Is there some situation in which the current behavior of
>> base64-decode-region causes an actual problem or confusion for users?

I never would have noticed this had it not caused me a problem.

I received a piece of email which passed through an older MTA.  This
MTA inserted a ! and a newline after every 1000 characters of a very
long line of base64-encoded data, which used to be common behavior.
When Gnus tried to display this email, it failed, because the !
characters were not recognized as valid base64 encoding.

>> Is there some situation in which the current behavior provides an
>> advantage?

The only case I can think of is if a program or the user tries to
base64 decode something which is not base64 encoded, they will receive
an error, instead of some other, possibly confusing behavior.
However, I believe this case is less common than non-transparent MTAs
making small changes to base64-encded data.

>> Also, how does the current development Emacs handle these things?
>> Your report is based on 21.4; the current sources may be different.

I do not know.

                Marc