Re: [Nmh-workers] Syntax for choosing content transfer encoding

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Ken,

> > `*8bit' wouldn't look to the future.  How about `field:value' as I
> > don't think it can be mistaken for any of the existing syntax?  It
> > could also occur more than once if future needs arise.  `cte:8bit'.
> 
> I'm not sure I follow that it wouldn't look to the future.  I was
> really thinking of "*" as being the start character to indicate the
> CTE.  So you could have *8bit, *q-p, *base64, whatever.  I don't see
> many (any) new CTE's being defined, but note that it's not a case of
> just copying it into the MIME draft, like every other header; it needs
> to be interpreted by mhbuild to perform the necessary encoding.

I was thinking of the next time we want to tweak the syntax having
already used () {} <> [] and now *.  We could even add fields for
existing ones, e.g. disposition, rather than have to remember it's {}
versus [] for description.

> - We'd switch to a default of 8bit for text/* parts.

Presumably 8bit isn't suitable, e.g. for a long line, whereas
quoted-printable is.  That's what I mean by having nmh pick what's best;
it uses the first that can legally cover the content.

Cheers, Ralph.