Re: [nmh-workers] mhshow: invalid BASE64 encoding in --

[Ken Hornstein]

>The non-base64 characters in the message body are after the end of the
>base64-encoded data.  They're not "in base64 data".

That message is a single text/plain part with a C-T-E of base64; I think
by definition the whole message body is supposed to be considered base64
data.  And how do we know that those characters are AFTER the base64
data?  Ok, fine, because we're humans and we understand that was added
by bad mailing list software, but how is software supposed to know that
the base64 content has ended in that message?

It sure seems to me from the RFC that it is permissible to ignore
characters that are not part of the base64 alphabet.  And really, I think
we are the only MUA that errors out in this way; just on pure usability
we aren't doing great.  I still think my original suggestion would
provide a reasonable compromise between usability and correctness.

--Ken