On Fri, 25 Oct 1991 10:24:30 CET Christian Reichetzeder said:
>The VM  Mailer doesn't like  some characters. For us  it's the º  ('6A'x). All
>other "National Characters" don't cause problems. LISTSERV doesn't quote names
>containing this character - and is probably correct.
 
   I think MAILER should be fixed to do quoting according to RFC821/822.
I'm not on 2.08 yet so maybe it was fixed there.  But it seems that XMAILER
has tried to define "acceptable" characters instead of using the RFC821/822
technique of defining "specials" and quoting those.
 
   As I read the RFCs ONLY the specials and control codes should be
quoted - the rest are to be treated as alphabetical.  Of course, that
is in the ASCII character set but it seems to me that in EBCDIC you
can consider characters "below" the space (< x'40') as control
characters.
 
   I didn't re-read everything just now so maybe I've forgotten some
exception.  It just seems rather ethnocentric to tell folks that they
can't use that letter, which is perfectly good in their language,
because it isn't American.  ;-) I usually try to explain to the sender
that they have to change their name if they want their mail to get
out.
 
           Marty
 
>Putting such  names in quotes doesn't  help. Either they are  single ones then
>LISTSERV let's  them alone but  of course the mailer  then chokes or  they are
>doubles then  they are converted  to single quotes by  LSV822TO and -  back to
>square one.
>Since there is the CROSSWELL option ("hack") could it be expanded to check for
>occurences of  such "dangerous" characters  too? Dunno what's  harmful besides
>the '6A'x.
>
>Christian