Re: fixing the current email module

On Fri, 9 Oct 2009 at 13:26, Glenn Linderman wrote:
> On approximately 10/9/2009 8:10 AM, came the following characters from the 
> keyboard of Stephen J. Turnbull:
>>  Glenn Linderman writes:
>> > > >  produce a defect report, but then simply converted to Unicode as if 
>> > > >  it were Latin-1 (since there is no other knowledge available that 
>> > > >  could produce a better conversion).
>> > > 
>> > >  No, that is already corruption.  Most clients will assume that string
>> > >  is valid as a header, because it's valid as a string.
>> > 
>> >  Sure it is corruption.  That's why there is a defect report.  But
>> >  the conversion technique is appropriate, per the Postel principle.
>>
>>  Actually, I would say you are emitting leniently, in violation of the
>>  Postel principle. 
>
> You can say that, but I don't have to believe it.  I'm talking about 
> accepting; the message has arrived, it is here, the client is trying to look 
> at it, and I'm talking about ways the client can look at not-quite-perfect 
> data, knowing that it is not quite perfect, but still being able to see it. 
> I'm not at all talking about emitting data.  You seem to be calling the email 
> package helping the client to accept not-quite-perfect data, as a form of 
> emitting data.  It is not.

IMO, the appropriate way for the email package to provide the API you
are talking about is it provide the client with a way to get at the raw
byte string, which I think everyone agrees on.  If the client wants to
decode it as if it were latin-1 to process it, it can then do that.

--David (RDM)