From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: RMAIL bails out with coding-system-error Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 16:45:31 +0300 (IDT) Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1020612249 14526 127.0.0.1 (5 May 2002 15:24:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 15:24:09 +0000 (UTC) Cc: David Kuehling , rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org, pmr@pajato.com Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 174Nrt-0003mB-00 for ; Sun, 05 May 2002 17:24:09 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 174Nyb-0002fx-00 for ; Sun, 05 May 2002 17:31:06 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 174Nrp-0005dg-00; Sun, 05 May 2002 11:24:05 -0400 Original-Received: from is.elta.co.il ([199.203.121.2]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 174MMS-0006Fi-00; Sun, 05 May 2002 09:47:36 -0400 Original-Received: from is (is [199.203.121.2]) by is.elta.co.il (8.9.3/8.8.8) with SMTP id QAA25216; Sun, 5 May 2002 16:45:31 +0300 (IDT) X-Sender: eliz@is Original-To: Simon Josefsson In-Reply-To: Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:3605 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:3605 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 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? 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. > 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.