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Re: base64 behavior is not MIME compliant
From: |
Nic Ferrier |
Subject: |
Re: base64 behavior is not MIME compliant |
Date: |
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 22:09:16 +0100 |
"Richard M. Stallman" <address@hidden> writes:
> RFC 3548 has this to say about characters not part of the encoding
> alphabet:
>
> Implementations MUST reject the encoding if it contains characters
> outside the base alphabet when interpreting base encoded data, unless
> the specification referring to this document explicitly states
> otherwise. Such specifications may, as MIME does, instead state that
> characters outside the base encoding alphabet should simply be ignored
> when interpreting data ("be liberal in what you accept").
>
> Words such as "must" claim an authority we do not recognize in the GNU
> Project. We do not _obey_ standards--rather, we see what they have to
> say, consider their recommendations, then do what seems best.
>
> I believe the best fix is for base64-decode-region to take an optional
> argument which specifies how liberal it should be about it's input,
> defaulting to the current behavior, and for Gnus to use this argument.
>
> To decide whether to do this, we need to know the answers to three questions:
>
> Is there some situation in which the current behavior of
> base64-decode-region causes an actual problem or confusion for
> users?
I use base64-decode-region in my own email client written in elisp.
I have *never* had a problem with it decoding a file so I couldn't
read it.
Nic
Re: base64 behavior is not MIME compliant, Arne Jørgensen, 2005/07/05