E-Mail Formats RE: Future of cctalk/cctech

Peter Corlett abuse at cabal.org.uk
Thu Jun 18 07:33:06 CDT 2020


On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 09:42:16AM +0100, Dave Wade via cctalk wrote:
[...]
> I wrote this as one dollar => $1.00
> This as one pound => $1
> And this as one euro => €1
> Lastly one cent => ¢1

This came over the wire as follows:

> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
[...]
> I wrote this as one dollar =3D> $1.00
> This as one pound =3D> $1
> And this as one euro =3D> =E2=82=AC1
> Lastly one cent =3D> =C2=A21

IOW, it has the correct headers to unambiguously decode the text. Whether the
receiving software is competent enough to handle Q-P UTF-8 text is something
else entirely, especially if it's in an obscure or recently-added script or
symbol set where suitable fonts don't exist or haven't been installed, but your
example doesn't contain any difficult code points.

The correct Q-P UTF-8 encoding for "£" is "=C2=A3". (I've dealt with so much
broken software that I know this without looking it up.) It seems likely that
it got mangled by something at your end in whatever converts it to "modern"
(1993) email format.



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