[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> (1) What causes =20, =B7, =FA etc. to appear at the end of lines, start of
> lines, or after an indent at the start of a line?
These are quoted-printable characters, which are the 7bit translation of
8bit characters within the text. Mail cannot contain binary characters.
Conversion to QP is the nicer alternative to outright rejection.
How to prevent? Depends. Some mailers are more prone to allowing such
characters (eg, "smart quotes", foreign language sets, etc). It
ultimately is a client compatibility problem and a user-education issue.
It is not specifically a Microsoft conspiracy as Ron suggests, though MS
is one of those mailers that make such things easier than most to do.
> (2) What causes the user to send out a message, seemingly innocent,
> (usually with an attachment initially), but to get gibberish results?
An attachment is usually a binary object, and as I said, binary data is
not allowed in email. So the attachment has to be converted to text
"gibberish" in order to pass. It will be converted back to binary at the
receiving end.
Normally, this process is hidden from the user. However, if something is
done to make the gibberish un-convertable, the attachment cannot be
remade and you will see the unconverted text. Either the body of the
attachment was mangled, or the headers that describe how to decode the
gibberish have been tampered with. You need to find out what is
corrupting the attachment.
BTW, attachments in mailing lists are not a good idea anyway.
--bill
