On Thu, 6 Nov 1997, Alan Thew wrote:
> When I first started using exim seriously, I decided to use turn this
> feature on so that we were "liberal in what we accepted" . The problem
> that we are starting to see (recently) is a number of PP machines refusing
> "8 bit" mail.
>
> However since exim is 8 bit clean and I have these problems can anyone
> give me a good reason for leaving 8BITMIME support in?
The reason I implemented the option was that somebody had a bunch of
MUAs that refused to send 8-bit characters over SMTP to any MTA that
didn't advertise 8BITMIME. All it does is to go through the protocol
motions to keep such MUAs (and MTAs) happy. Exim is, as you say, 8-bit
clean. It does not play any such protocol games on output.
I happen to believe that after well over 10 years of using an 8-bit
transport (viz. TCP/IP) all the messing around that goes on over 7-bit
characters is a huge waste of everybody's time. I don't know why the
community refuses to bite this particular bullet. Perhaps I'm hugely
ignorant, but I don't think I'm alone.
Turning off 8BITMIME won't help you if the source of the 8-bit messages
is itself 8-bit clean and pays no attention to such stuff. PP, as
configured in many places, is Particular Pedantic, where, IMHO, it is
better to be Purposefully Pragmatic.
Refusing 8-bit mail just for the hell of it isn't helpful to the end
users. An MTA faced with 8-bit characters and an output channel that it
has no information about can do one of:
(1) Refuse the mail
(2) Convert it into some 7-bit format
(3) Just send it anyway
(1) doesn't help anybody and (2) often turns the message into an
unreadable format for the recipient, whereas (3) has the highest chance
of getting done what the message sender actually wanted done. Gosh! Do
what the user wants! What a novel idea...
[waiting for the flames...]
--
Philip Hazel University Computing Service,
ph10@??? New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@??? England. Phone: +44 1223 334714
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