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List:       pine-info
Subject:    Long subjects encoded in QP, B64
From:       Pan.Dimakopoulos () cti ! gr
Date:       1996-04-30 15:16:08
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We have noticed some problems in reading mails which have been sent to
a Unix system from the WinpMail package.
The problem has to do with the way that 8-bit Subjects are MIME encoded
in a mail message. In our case we are using ISO-8859-7 chars.

When we send a message which includes greek chars pine encodes that
either in QP or BASE64 and then it breaks them in chunks of ~75 chars.
But, when WinpMail sends a similar message then it does not do the
breaking at this size but at a bigger one. The result is that pine does
not like it and, when it shows the received message, it displays the
Subject in the encoded way (with many '=' s). We have been wondering if
the problem is due to the way pine or WinpMail does the encoding.

The relevant rfc1342 defines that the size of the word cannot be longer
than 75 chars. Does anybody know if this refers to the encoded word
including spaces or to each individual word which participates in the
eencoding? During some test, by using vi, we entered into the mail
box and we removed few of the chars in the subject. Afterwards the
subject was displayed ok.

>From those tests for example the undecoded header was:

Subject: [CF-TECH:24]=?ISO-8859-7?Q?=D3=F5=ED=DC=ED=F4=E7=F3=E7_=E1=FD=F1=E9=EF_=F3=F4=E9=F2_10:30?=

So what exactly is going on with the exact size of each chunk?


Thanks,

           ------------------------------------------------------
           | Panos Dimakopoulos             dimakop@cti.gr      |
           | COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE                      |
           | P.O. Box 1122                                      |
           | 261 10 Patras, Greece                              |
           | Tel (+30) 61 992061, 994317    Fax (+30) 61 993973 |
           ------------------------------------------------------

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