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Re: use base64 instead of quoted-printable in format-patch headers (was Re: Make format-patch produce UTF-8 `From:' header)

From
Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date
Sep 20, 2010, 13:46 UTC
Message-ID
<AANLkTim-vfrxGbdfXeef81uP29NSSzutHbs-yhhQtiA8@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To
<87k4mgsj1j.fsf_-_@gmail.com>
On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 12:20, Štěpán Němec <stepnem@gmail.com> wrote:
Show 34 quoted lines
> Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
>
>> Štěpán Němec <stepnem@gmail.com> writes:
>>> Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>>> Maybe format-patch could provide another mode to produce patches that
>>>> do not include unnecessary headers (in particular, leaving out the
>>>> difficult "From " line and using UTF-8 instead of quoted-printable for
>>>> the "From: " line).
>>
>>> FWIW, the quoted-printable `From:' encoding has always annoyed me -- I
>>> replace it manually with my name & address in UTF-8 every time I send
>>> out a patch. What is the reason format-patch does that (and if there is
>>> a reason not to change the default, could an option to disable it be
>>> provided)?
>>
>> Well, it's required if you're going to actually send the result directly
>> as a mail message, since the RFC 5322 format requires headers be encoded
>> using RFC 2047 encoding.
>
> Right... thanks for pointing that out. So the problem I'm seeing is
> actually different -- some software (including Mutt and the mailing
> list/archive software used by this list) appears to have problems with
> quoted-printable, but not with base64.
>
> To take my name as example: when I send mail from Mutt, it is encoded as
> "=?utf-8?B?xaB0xJtww6FuIE7Em21lYw==?=", i.e. base64, and both Mutt and
> the vger archive seem to decode it properly, whereas the
> quoted-printable version produced by fromat-patch, i.e.
> "=?utf-8?q?=C5=A0t=C4=9Bp=C3=A1n=20N=C4=9Bmec?=" in this case, is left
> undecoded by Mutt and mis-decoded in the ML archive as far as I have
> seen. I'm not sure about other software (Gnus seems to be able to deal
> with both correctly), but perhaps it would make sense to switch to
> base64 in format-patch?

The advantage of quoted-printable is the printable part. It's at least somewhat human readable, e.g.:

    =?UTF-8?q?=C3=86var=20Arnfj=C3=B6r=C3=B0=20Bjarmason?=

I have some chance of spotting a typo or something in there if I look at the raw E-Mail (which I often do), but not with base64.

Are we sure we're correctly encoding quoted-printable? E.g. maybe ?UTF-8? instead of ?utf-8? would work? It seems odd that a widely used client like Mutt would screw up such a widely used encoding.

Previous: Štěpán NěmecNext: Brandon Casey
Message 7 of 10 in “Re: git am should recognize >From”
  1. Jonathan NiederSep 19, 2010
  2. Jonathan NiederSep 19, 2010
  3. Russ AllberySep 19, 2010
  4. Make format-patch produce UTF-8 `From:' header (was Re: git am should recognize >From)Štěpán Němec, Sep 19, 2010
  5. Russ AllberySep 19, 2010
  6. use base64 instead of quoted-printable in format-patch headers (was Re: Make format-patch produce UTF-8 `From:' header)Štěpán Němec, Sep 20, 2010
  7. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonSep 20, 2010
  8. Brandon CaseySep 20, 2010
  9. Štěpán NěmecSep 20, 2010
  10. Erik Faye-LundSep 19, 2010

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