On Thu, 7 Sep 2000, Clark Pickett wrote:

>> Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 14:33:22 -0400
>> MIME-Version: 1.0
>> X-Priority: 3
>> X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
>> X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200
>> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>> Content-Transfer-Encoding:  quoted-printable
>
><snip>
>
>What you describe above is not MIME-encoding.  It is quoted-printable
>encoding.  Please see the last line of the message header.

I hate to get picky, but quoted-printable encoding is part of the MIME
standard.

i.e., quoted-printable encoding is a form of MIME encoding whose
presence is indicated by that last line of the message header.

Base64 encoding is another form of encoding defined by the MIME
standard which can encode binary as well as text data, but truly looks
like garbage in its raw format.  At least with quoted-printable
encoding you can kind of read it in its raw format.

>We have
>Default-Options= ,NOMIME and Language= NoHTML as the defaults for all of
>our lists, but we still frequently get postings with exactly what you are
>showing here.

All that the NOMIME option controls at this point is the format of the
digests distributed by LISTSERV, i.e. whether the digests are in
simple text format or whether the digests have the messages attached
in MIME format.  It has no effect whatever on subscribers who receive
their list messages individually.  They will receive those messages in
whatever MIME format they were sent in (with the exception that if
Language=NoHTML is specified LISTSERV will strip out the HTML part of
a multipart plain text/HTML message).  This is all documented in the
manual, but many people apparently do not know it.


                  <stuff about Outlook Express snipped>


>In addition, you will also frequently see quoted-printable messages
>from Novell GroupWise users.  Regretfully, you will probably have to
>put up with them, because, as I have been told, the
>encoding/formatting options are set by the system administrator and
>are not individually configurable.

As a former GroupWise user I can confirm that.  There is nothing an
individual user can do to change it either way.  You either have to
live with it or ban users who are unlucky enough to have their
organization use GroupWise for e-mail.

Dennis