>Unfortunately, it's an amateur radio BBS written in the 80s that only 
>understands plain text.
> It's still extremely useful and widely used, especially in emergency comms

So worthwhile investing some cash and getting it updated so that it can cope 
with the modern world?  And presumably the receiving equipment is 8-bit capable 
and not also something from the 80s?

As Dianne has already pointed out to you, converting everything to 
Quoted-Printable doesn't necessarily make it more readable.  In the most 
extreme case, you'll encode spaces as well as extended characters, and 
especially when you're trying to pass addresses or telephone numbers then this 
could turn out to be problematic  - try this one out:

We're=20off=20to=20the=20seaside,=20where=20the=20temperature=3D20=C2=B0C=20:-)=20=20El=20Ni=C3=B1o=20has=20some=20benefits!=20=20Call=20me=20on=20(+44)=20123=20456=207890

Paste it into http://www.webatic.com/run/convert/qp.php if you're struggling.

Now tell me that in an emergency situation you can extract the phone number 
quickly and without errors, and that you got the temperature from that message. 
 If an address has Spanish, French, German, etc accented characters, they'll 
also be encoded rather than converted to the nearest unaccented character, so 
in the example above " El NiƱo" becomes "El=20Ni=C3=B1o" rather than "El Nino". 
 

Eventually this will come back to bite you.  Time to bring it at least into the 
90s, if not into the 21st century...

Paul.


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