[Tcllib-devel] Re: [Tcllib-bugs] mime: -encoding 8bit

[Oliver B. <obi...@gm...>]

> >Hello all,
>
> >consider the following code:
> >(mv) 5 % mime::initialize -canonical text/html -encoding 8bit -param
> >{charset iso-8859-1} -file test.html
> >::mime::1
> >(mv) 6 % mime::buildmessage ::mime::1
> >Can't handle content encoding "8bit"
>
> >Am I missing something? The same appears, when I try to write '-encoding
> >7bit'. Do I need some additional packages?
>
> What encodings are 7bit and 8bit ? Can you give me references to
> specifications
> defining them ?
>
> I know only of 'not encoded', 'base64', and 'quoted-printable'.
>
> --
> Andreas Kupries <and...@Ac...>
> Developer @ http://www.ActiveState.com
>
Hello Andreas,

The following text I found in a pine-users mailing list:

Here are details from the MIME
standard (http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/MIME/MIME.html, MIME Part One,
Section 6):

    The Content-Transfer-Encoding values "7bit", "8bit", and "binary" all
mean
    that the identity (i.e. NO) encoding transformation has been performed.
As
    such, they serve simply as indicators of the domain of the body data,
and
    provide useful information about the sort of encoding that might be
needed
    for transmission in a given transport system. The terms "7bit data",
"8bit
    data", and "binary data" are all defined in Section 2.

    The quoted-printable and base64 encodings transform their input from an
    arbitrary domain into material in the "7bit" range, thus making it safe
to
    carry over restricted transports. The specific definition of the
    transformations are given below.  [...]

Regards Oliver