GNU bug report logs - #13808
Gnus gratuiously messes with the encoding of attachments

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Message #11 received at 13808 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: David Kastrup <dak <at> gnu.org>
To: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
Cc: 13808 <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#13808: Gnus gratuiously messes with the encoding of
 attachments
Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 18:21:59 +0200

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org> writes:

> David Kastrup <dak <at> gnu.org> writes:
>
>> I append an attachment with C-c C-m f that had been originally encoded
>> in UTF-8.  Gnus decides to reencode it in Latin-1 for whatever reason.
>> Attachments should _always_ be a faithful byte-by-byte rendition of the
>> original file.
>
> I think MUAs are free to alter the encoding of forwarded messages as
> they choose.

I am not talking about a "forwarded message" but rather an attached
file.  The message part included with C-c m f was specified as

(text/x-lilypond, attachment)

It was _not_ included "inline".  It was not a part of the message.

> Even MTAs can alter encodings according to their whims.

Not in attachments.

> So I don't think it's a bug that Gnus re-encodes stuff, but in this
> instance it sounds like it's re-encoding things wrongly.  Or do you
> have a preference set somewhere that prefers Latin-1?

This was a program file in a programming language that uses utf-8 as its
text encoding.  You can't just reencode the file in Latin-1 and expect
it to magically still work.

If we were talking about an _inline_ text, reencoding it in a different
encoding would already be hard to justify, but this was rather an
_attachment_.

If it is impossible to send attachments without them getting reencoded
unasked for, attaching files become _useless_.

-- 
David Kastrup

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