Re: Emacs 22 branch created.

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
> CC: address@hidden, address@hidden,
>       address@hidden
> Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 00:06:46 -0400
> 
>     > I think it should decode a message when it is first visited (and the
>     > extra header that Rmail saves data in is constructed).
> 
>     And then what? how do you store the decoded message so that it is
>     still in mbox format?
> 
> I do not see the issue.  The file is always in mbox format.  Decoding
> the message contents doesn't alter the overall file format.

Decoding creates the internal Emacs representation of characters in
memory.  By contrast, the file where messages are stored is a disk
file, and the question I was asking is how to store the decoded
characters in that file, if you don't want to decode them each time
you look at that message.  Are you suggesting to store them, after
decoding, in the internal Emacs format (i.e. emacs-mule)?  That would
mean that only Emacs will be able to read the resulting mbox file.

Perhaps we need to step back and consider the larger perspective: what
is the main purposes of switching to mbox, if not to maintain the
messages in the format that any other MUA can read and display
correctly?  Writing our internal representation of non-ASCII
characters there would defeat that purpose.