Re: [Nmh-workers] RFC 2047 vs RFC 2231 encoding for MIME parameters

[Earl Hood]

On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 1:11 PM, Ken Hornstein wrote:

>>The question remains of whether mhstore should decode 2047-encoded
>>filenames natively.  It'd be friendly and it's very unlikely that what
>>looks ike an encoded string isn't.  On the other hand, running mhfixmsg
>>shouldn't be prohibitive.
>
> I know; I'm torn about this.  I mean, yeah, mhfixmsg will take care of it.
> But still ... ugh; if the brokenness wasn't so widespread, I would say no.
> Not sure.  Thoughts from anyone else?

I experienced this problem years ago with my project.  I ended up
implementing 2047 decoding for filename parameter since it appears others
are unable to read specifications.

Google has no excuse for generating such data, but as you note in your OP,
other MUAs have been doing it for a long time and from vendors that are
notorious for not following specs properly.  I do not know how many MUAs
support RFC 2231.

I do not recommend blanket 2047 decoding for parameter data.  Just limit it
to parameters associated with a filename.

--ewh