Re: uuencode: multi-bytes char in remote file name contains bytes >0x80

[Bruno Haible]

Eli,

> > An obvious problem with the patch is that it considers a file name to be a
> > byte sequence. But different users may work in different locales, with
> > different encodings.

And users want to see the original filenames. Users don't want to see mojibake,
that is, a mix of garbled characters (see attached screenshot).

> Doesn't the same problem exist with the file's data itself?

No, there is normally no problem with the contents of the files, because users
have learned to use file formats that are independent of locale. When users
send images (.jpeg or .png), text documents (.html, .odt, .rtf, even .doc),
presentations (.pdf, .odp), etc. they have no problem. And those few users who
receive plain text (.txt) files have the option to change the character
encoding in the browser they use to view the text file (in mozilla: via the
View > Encoding menu).

But when uudecode has created files with garbled names on the receiver's disk,
there is no program which will magically fix it.

> IMO, it's not uuencode's problem to solve.  The correspondents need to
> solve it "by some other means" (TM), for file data as for its name.

No, communication that matches users' reasonable expectations does not
work like this.

Bruno
-- 
In memoriam Yonatan Netanyahu <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonatan_Netanyahu>