8bit to quoted-printable

[Atlantis Online]

Hi

I have installed the latest Postfix 2.0.15 and have the problem, that
mails with 8bit-headers (i.e. a german Umlaut (=E4=F6=FC) in the subject)=
does
not shown correctly. The Cyrus IMAPD shows a 'X' instead.

I've read somewhere, that (other than Sendmail) Postfix does not
automatically convert 8bit to quoted-printable.

Postfix MIME works incl. quoted-printable conversion
- Conversion of 8-bit content when delivering mail to systems that
cannot receive 8-bit mail. This eliminates an acceptance problem
with people who insist on Postfix being a good network neighbour.
Being a one-pass MIME processor, it will not attempt to fix illegal
mail such as mail with 7-bit labels on top of 8-bit content.

http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/postfix/2002-05/1848.html

How do I enable this, or what have I to do, so that mails with
8bit-headers are converted into quoted-printable and are shown correctly
in mail-clients like SquirrelMail or MS Outlook?

Thanks for help!

Greetings
Stefan

[Wietse Venema]

Post by Atlantis Online
Hi
I have installed the latest Postfix 2.0.15 and have the problem, that
mails with 8bit-headers (i.e. a german Umlaut (???) in the subject) does
not shown correctly. The Cyrus IMAPD shows a 'X' instead.

The standard does not allow 8-bit characters in message HEADERS.
Cyrus converts them the X.

Post by Atlantis Online
I've read somewhere, that (other than Sendmail) Postfix does not
automatically convert 8bit to quoted-printable.

No MTA converts message HEADERS to quoted-printable. That can
be done only with message BODIES.

Encoding of message HEADERS must be done by the mail user agent
and is described in RFC 2047.

Wietse

Post by Atlantis Online

Postfix MIME works incl. quoted-printable conversion
- Conversion of 8-bit content when delivering mail to systems that
cannot receive 8-bit mail. This eliminates an acceptance problem
with people who insist on Postfix being a good network neighbour.
Being a one-pass MIME processor, it will not attempt to fix illegal
mail such as mail with 7-bit labels on top of 8-bit content.

http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/postfix/2002-05/1848.html
How do I enable this, or what have I to do, so that mails with
8bit-headers are converted into quoted-printable and are shown correctly
in mail-clients like SquirrelMail or MS Outlook?
Thanks for help!
Greetings
Stefan

[Victor Duchovni]

Post by Wietse Venema
No MTA converts message HEADERS to quoted-printable. That can
be done only with message BODIES.
Encoding of message HEADERS must be done by the mail user agent
and is described in RFC 2047.

MTAs *cannot* convert 8bit headers to quoted-printable, because the
standard for doing so requires that one specify a character set for the
encoded data, and the MTA has no way to guess what the character set might
be.

[Atlantis Online]

Thanks for answer!

Post by Wietse Venema
Encoding of message HEADERS must be done by the mail user agent
and is described in RFC 2047.

But why it works with Sendmail-MTA when sending a mail from root console
(which, I think, doesn't encode a message?):

---- mail header ----
Return-Path: <root>
Received: (from ***@localhost)
by xxxx.xxx.xx (8.9.3/8.9.3/SuSE Linux 8.9.3-0.1) id NAA15244
for stefan; Thu, 11 Sep 2003 13:14:27 +0200
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 13:14:27 +0200
From: root <***@xxxx.xxx.xx>
Message-Id: <***@xxxx.xxx.xx>
To: ***@xxxx.xxx.xx
Subject: test =E4=F6=FC
X-UIDL: be24b55851d4f4ce5ff62a7a42368f57
Status: RO
---- mail header ----
--> Subject is correct


and with Postfix/Cyrus it doesn't works:

---- mail header ----
Return-Path: <***@xxxx.xxx.xx>
Received: from xxxx.xxx.xx ([unix socket])
by xxxx.xxx.xx (Cyrus v2.1.15) with LMTP; Thu, 11 Sep 2003 13:17:06 +020=
0
X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 2.2
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by xxxx.xxx.xx (Postfix) with ESMTP id 758E74E4005
for <***@xxxx.xxx.xx>; Thu, 11 Sep 2003 13:17:06 +0200 (CEST)
Received: by xxxx.xxx.xx (Postfix, from userid 0)
id 4AA2A4E4002; Thu, 11 Sep 2003 13:17:00 +0200 (CEST)
To: ***@xxxx.xxx.xx
Subject: test XXX
Message-Id: <***@xxxx.xxx.xx>
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 13:17:00 +0200 (CEST)
From: ***@xxxx.xxx.xx (root)
X-Amavis-Alert: BAD HEADER Non-encoded 8-bit data (char E4 hex) in messag=
e
header 'Subject'
Subject: test \344\366\374\n ^
---- mail header ----
--> Subject is not correct


is there no possibility (with Postfix or Cyrus) to change this?

Post by Wietse Venema

Post by Atlantis Online
Hi
I have installed the latest Postfix 2.0.15 and have the problem, that
mails with 8bit-headers (i.e. a german Umlaut (???) in the subject) do=

es

Post by Wietse Venema

Post by Atlantis Online
not shown correctly. The Cyrus IMAPD shows a 'X' instead.

The standard does not allow 8-bit characters in message HEADERS.
Cyrus converts them the X.

Post by Atlantis Online
I've read somewhere, that (other than Sendmail) Postfix does not
automatically convert 8bit to quoted-printable.

No MTA converts message HEADERS to quoted-printable. That can
be done only with message BODIES.
Encoding of message HEADERS must be done by the mail user agent
and is described in RFC 2047.
Wietse

Post by Atlantis Online

Postfix MIME works incl. quoted-printable conversion
- Conversion of 8-bit content when delivering mail to systems that
cannot receive 8-bit mail. This eliminates an acceptance problem
with people who insist on Postfix being a good network neighbour.
Being a one-pass MIME processor, it will not attempt to fix illegal
mail such as mail with 7-bit labels on top of 8-bit content.

http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/postfix/2002-05/1848.html
How do I enable this, or what have I to do, so that mails with
8bit-headers are converted into quoted-printable and are shown correct=

ly

Post by Wietse Venema

Post by Atlantis Online
in mail-clients like SquirrelMail or MS Outlook?
Thanks for help!
Greetings
Stefan

[Victor Duchovni]

Post by Atlantis Online
But why it works with Sendmail-MTA when sending a mail from root console

Perhaps Sendmail's *local submission* code applies the platform default
character set to locally injected mail. This is not necessarily correct
(Chinese users on ISO-Latin systems would not get good results), but may
be best possible. Postfix has no such kludges. Message encoding is the job
of the MUA. Postfix can changed 8bit bodies to quoted printable, but
cannot synthesize header encodings.

[Matthias Andree]

Post by Atlantis Online
Thanks for answer!

Post by Wietse Venema
Encoding of message HEADERS must be done by the mail user agent
and is described in RFC 2047.

But why it works with Sendmail-MTA when sending a mail from root console
---- mail header ----
Return-Path: <root>
by xxxx.xxx.xx (8.9.3/8.9.3/SuSE Linux 8.9.3-0.1) id NAA15244
for stefan; Thu, 11 Sep 2003 13:14:27 +0200
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 13:14:27 +0200
Subject: test =E4=F6=FC

-^^^-

If you consider that "working", please re-read RFC-2822 and 2047 to find
the opposite. Mail header data is 7-bit. Has been since 21 years now.
Because they don't play the Guessing Game that other MTAs subscribe to,
potentially corrupting mail from broken MUAs beyond repair...

I wonder how my post's national characters look like when I send UTF-8
and the MTA guesses ISO-8859-15...

--=20
Matthias Andree

Encrypt your mail: my GnuPG key ID is 0x052E7D95

[Wietse Venema]

Post by Atlantis Online
Thanks for answer!

Post by Wietse Venema
Encoding of message HEADERS must be done by the mail user agent
and is described in RFC 2047.

But why it works with Sendmail-MTA when sending a mail from root console
---- mail header ----
Return-Path: <root>
by xxxx.xxx.xx (8.9.3/8.9.3/SuSE Linux 8.9.3-0.1) id NAA15244
for stefan; Thu, 11 Sep 2003 13:14:27 +0200
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 13:14:27 +0200
Subject: test ???
X-UIDL: be24b55851d4f4ce5ff62a7a42368f57
Status: RO
---- mail header ----
--> Subject is correct

If you typed the questions marks, then of course it works.

If the question marks were 8-bit characters, then your definition
of "it works" is flawed.

Wietse