I don't see a problem with it if the translation is 1-to-1 (and that's a pretty big if). Disregarding federal law for the moment, what is the harm in the mailman reprinting your letters with nicer font on nicer paper? It seems to me that if the mailman wants to do that, as long as they don't lose any of the information of the original letter I would benefit from having an easier to read letter.
Processing them in Python. :) No, really. Python is horrible at dealing with strings of different encodings. You could generalize that to any complex app with lots of data sources: the only sane way to do it is to convert everything to a single encoding at the door.
(edit) whups, I hadn't thought about PGP/etc signatures. sigh
Everything you say and more. Internationalization, ick -- anyone who thinks this is easy has no clue how deep this rabbit hole goes.
On Han unification: the Japanese reluctance to this is partly because they're being told "Some of your national literature needs to die so that our data standard can live. Deal." and partly because they're being told "What's with all the resistance, you xenophobic bastards, get with the effing program already.", generally by people who they perceive as not quite getting the issue.
All the educated Americans in the room have read Romeo and Juliet, right? Remember the balcony scene? Remember the world in the balcony scene that you have never heard in any other context?
O Romeo, Romeo, Wherefore art thou Romeo?
Imagine being told "For technical reasons, we're standardizing computers away from being able to accept 'Wherefore' as input or output. As a workaround, we suggest using "why", or perhaps putting the word in an image file and pasting it in when it is required. Most people don't use "wherefore" anyhow and, if you routinely do, you can modify your editing software to accommodate it, as long as it doesn't have to interface with any other computer ever. Oh, by the way, some other words you know are also going to stop working. It's nothing major. Well, OK, 'Gertrudes' might find it somewhat annoying but we've got a nice selection of names from Aluicious to Xavier and, if all else fails, you can spell it phonetically because your language is capable of that, too, and don't pretend otherwise."
Drop badly encoded email on the floor because you hope it's probably spam? That deliberately violates Postel's Law, which is what keeps this mess mostly working.
And doesn't multipart/signed rely on knowing the actual charset the signer was using?
Umm, no. Drop badly encoded email because most of it is spam. Or, at least, that's the hypothesis that he's asking you to help verify. Did you even read the article?
[+] [-] pilif|17 years ago|reply
It should not even touch the headers besides adding a Received-header to the top.
Re-Encoding all Mails passed through is definitely not what I call "not touching".
I know that there are some exceptions (i.e. 8bitmime), but I still think that mail servers should keep their hands of what is passing through them.
Like mailmen who are not supposed to open the envelope, read the letters and reprint them using a nicer font on nicer paper :-)
[+] [-] mrduncan|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grandalf|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aristus|17 years ago|reply
(edit) whups, I hadn't thought about PGP/etc signatures. sigh
[+] [-] dnewcome|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patio11|17 years ago|reply
On Han unification: the Japanese reluctance to this is partly because they're being told "Some of your national literature needs to die so that our data standard can live. Deal." and partly because they're being told "What's with all the resistance, you xenophobic bastards, get with the effing program already.", generally by people who they perceive as not quite getting the issue.
All the educated Americans in the room have read Romeo and Juliet, right? Remember the balcony scene? Remember the world in the balcony scene that you have never heard in any other context?
O Romeo, Romeo, Wherefore art thou Romeo?
Imagine being told "For technical reasons, we're standardizing computers away from being able to accept 'Wherefore' as input or output. As a workaround, we suggest using "why", or perhaps putting the word in an image file and pasting it in when it is required. Most people don't use "wherefore" anyhow and, if you routinely do, you can modify your editing software to accommodate it, as long as it doesn't have to interface with any other computer ever. Oh, by the way, some other words you know are also going to stop working. It's nothing major. Well, OK, 'Gertrudes' might find it somewhat annoying but we've got a nice selection of names from Aluicious to Xavier and, if all else fails, you can spell it phonetically because your language is capable of that, too, and don't pretend otherwise."
[+] [-] stcredzero|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gchpaco|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfranke|17 years ago|reply
Paws off my mail, Zed.
[+] [-] dmm|17 years ago|reply
Last time I checked email could only be 7bit ascii because of many legacy servers.
[+] [-] vidarh|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prodigal_erik|17 years ago|reply
And doesn't multipart/signed rely on knowing the actual charset the signer was using?
[+] [-] calambrac|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrockway|17 years ago|reply