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8-bit or QP?

8-bit or QP? — David Knudsen <[email protected]> read last week’s article in NetBITS-005 on MIME encoding and Quoted-Printable text, and noted that his Netscape mail client offers settings for both "Allow 8-bit" and "MIME Compliant (Quoted Printable)". He wondered why you would choose one rather than the other, given that both attempt to enable you to send 8-bit characters (which include non-standard characters, such as accented vowels and special symbols) in email. Will Mayall <[email protected]>, who contributed last week’s piece, replied:

In general, you want to stay away from sending 8-bit email unless you know that all the servers and gateways between you and the destination can manage 8-bit email. The one time when this is relatively safe is in an intranet where you know the mail server that is being used.


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