Re: [leafnode-list] Why was support for 8 bit characters in headers dropped?

[Ralf Wildenhues <wildenhu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

* Peter N. M. Hansteen wrote on Thu, Aug 08, 2002 at 10:13:26AM CEST:
> One morning last week, after upgrading (apt-get update; apt-get upgrade)
> my leafnode to 1.9.24, was a bit baffled to find that my followup to a
> no.it.tjenester.news.diverse thread with "Subject: Re: Mail etter 
> postinger på no.test" was rejected by my newly refreshed leafnode with
> a "441 format error" message claiming illegal use of 8-bit characters
> in the header.
> 
> I am aware that the formal standardization of 8 bit and wider characters
> in usenet messages has been slow-moving to put it mildly. However, in
> the meantime the regional hierarchies whose languages require 8 bit
> or wider characters have adopted agreed-upon practices. I've been using
> leafnode here since version 0.7 or thereabouts, and it has always
> handled the conventions of various regional hierarchies without any
> sort trouble.
> 
> Until 1.9.24, that is. I'm hoping leafnode doesn't stay broken.

Actually, there has been doubt that there was maybe a possibility that
leafnode before version 1.9.24 might _not_ cope with 8bit in headers.
This and the rule "be conservative in what you send" led to the decision
of not allowing 8bit in headers at this time.  We are aware of the
discussion of moving over to UTF-8 in headers without any encoding at
all.  This will most probably be implemented in one of the next
leafnode-2.beta releases, but possibly not in 1.9.x.

Until then, please stick with current rules of proper header encoding.
In case Mozilla is your news agent, it is aware of header encoding (I
just tried it with your stated subject ;) but I could not tell you the
necessary config setting to enforce this, as I don't use Mozilla
regularly.  Please consult Mozilla (or whatever news reader you use)
documentation for this, and think of the then-even-bigger audience
worldwide that would be able to decode and read your headers properly
;-)

Regards,
Ralf

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