Re: [Nmh-workers] More fun with charset functions

[Paul Fox]

ken wrote:
 > >We really need to look at the causes and effects, and see what solution is
 > >all around best.   Here, as you (or maybe someone else) said in an earlier
 > >message (and again below), using "unknown-8bit" (whether technically
 > >permitted or not) just shifts the burden onto the mail reader - think of
 > >what we do when receiving a message that has a charset set that way.  How
 > >are we supposed to correctly display that message to the user?   How is
 > >anyone else?   This cannot possibly be the right thing to do.
 > 
 > Here's the deal.
 > 
 > Yes, I agree with you: the core problem is someone is using 8-bit
 > characters with a US-ASCII locale, and that's a misconfiguration.  It
 > should be corrected; we should throw an error.  Thinking about it more,
 > it's more sensible that we do that; it's easier to throw errors like
 > this when you're dealing with individual tools versus monolithic MUAs.
 > The problem is right now, architecturally, it's hard (see previous
 > email).  We should fix that.  But we SHOULD do lots of things; time

isn't it the case that any error we generate will have to result in
failure?  adios() is a harsh form of failure, but it will get the job
done.  we could add some nag-ware that causes the error to surface
long before the user is actually trying to get work done, using
admonish():  "your configuration won't handle blah blah blah
correctly.  please fix this.  continuing...."  then when eventually we
have to adios() because the bad thing has happened, at least no one
will be surprised.

paul


 > is finite.  Returning US-ASCII for 8-bit characters is super-wrong.
 > Returning "unknown-8bit" is at least valid according to the RFCs.  We
 > can always go back and fix that later (that DOES happen, although the
 > time frame can be large).
 > 
 > --Ken
 > 
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 > https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

=----------------------
 paul fox, address@hidden (arlington, ma, where it's 83.1 degrees)