No.
People have told me about 8BITMIME, and yes, I know about it.
But it's actually not relevant to this, because it's the SAME problem.
Both QP and 8BITMIME are there to perpetuate an old standard that should
never have been there in the first place, and should not be supported or
excused these days.
(The reason I picked on QP was that that was what was being discussed:
the same arguments hold against 8BITMIME as it's really the same thing).
> The idea is that, over time, most mailers will implement 8BITMIME. When
> this has happened, there will no longer be a reason to use QP; simply use
> 8 bit and it will work.
Right. As with QP, it's a cludge, and as with QP, people excuse
themselves by saying "use the right tools and you won't even see the
problem".
> In the meantime, using QP means that it works even where mailers have not
> yet adopted 8BITMIME.
>
> Yes, you can have your cake and eat it, too.
You misunderstand my tirade.
I was _not_ flaming QP (read 8BITMIME here if you want to) from any
technical standpoint, because technically it makes sense ("We have all
these 7-bit RFC's, so let's create a new standard to make 8-bit
information possible").
The reason I don't like QP (8BM) is that it doesn't fix the problem, it
works around it. These standards are broken, because it allows your
average lazy person to _continue_ using 7-bit mailers. THAT is why I
hate QP. THAT is why I likened QP to giving painkillers to a cacher
patient instead of trying to get rid of the cancer in the first place.
What the 8-bit standard SHOULD have done would have been to make _one_
very simple new RFC: a RFC that updates the old mail RFC's and requires
mailers to be 8-bit clean. PERIOD. None of this 8BITMIME and QP sh*t.
That would have forced vendors to actually _fix_ their setups in order
to be able to say that they comply with the RFC's.
Because the RFC's didn't do that, I cannot complain to anybody who is
having a 7-bit mail gateway, because the jerk who is in charge of that
stone-age piece of machinery will just point to the RFC's and say
"nyaah, nyaah, it's _your_ problem". THAT is why the whole philosophy
behind QP and 8BITMIME is so broken.
And THAT is why I'd advocate sending 8-bit mails regardless of whether
the receiver tells you he accepts them or not. In most cases, 8-bit
mails will actually go through an old mailer too (ironic - it actually
works _better_ if you ignore the standards), and if they don't, we can
at least _hope_ that the maintainer of that site will upgrade his
software.
Linus