Re: [Exim] 8bitmime?

On Tue, Mar 19, 2002 at 07:38:33PM +0100, Phil Pennock wrote:
> On 2002-03-19 at 12:06 +0000, D.M.Chapman wrote:
> > It seems from the docs that setting accept_8bitmime will allow this remote
> > system to happily deliver the email to our user but is this likely to
> > cause us problems in the future by delivering 8bit stuff onwards to a non
> > 8 bit MTA? Are these still outthere? Should I care?
>
> Yes. MMDF. Thus Plc (Demon Internet) -- you'll hit problems whenever
> you deliver to one of the UK's largest ISPs. Perhaps not so good for a
> UK academic institution. Same goes for Demon NL [*].

:-(


> Unfortunately, yes. At this time. Demon is working on migrating away
> from MMDF; this is public knowledge. But it's still there, receiving
> any mail sent to a Demon customer. Uhm, the best I can recommend, if
> you feel that this is an issue, is to raise it as an issue with Demon
> and to get those Demon customers whom you need to communicate to do so.

Many of our students (and staff) will be sending to demon users no doubt.

> If a server doesn't advertise 8BITMIME, any server which _does_ have
> 8bit content, should downgrade the content. Exim doesn't have the
> ability to do this. Therefore you'll be introducing breakage and
> corruption by turning the feature on.

Ok. So it sounds like a bad thing to do. Do you have any references to exact
bits of rfc that say the above (I know I could look - but if you happen to
know :-) so that I can prepare my defence. I can see this turning into a
big argument with a deputy director here at the uni :-( If I can provide
black and white evidence that the remote site should be "down converting"
to 7 bit as we do not advertise 8bit it will help!

Cheers,

Darren