8bit mime support? (linked to thunderbird issue)

[JL]

Le 29/07/2025 à 23:10, Robert J. Hansen via Gnupg-devel a écrit :
>> don´t care if some stupid software have bandwidth to loose...
>
> The cold reality is there exists antique software and obsolete 
> workflows, and the moment new software starts breaking them do you 
> know who gets blamed? The new software's maintainer who is doing 
> things the right way.
>
> PGP 2.6 dates from 1991, has been obsolete for 30 years at this point, 
> has long been eclipsed by multiple generations of newer standards 
> (RFC2440, RFC2440bis, RFC4880, RFC4880bis, now LibrePGP), but GnuPG 
> still supports it because whenever Werner even makes noise about 
> ending PGP 2.6 support there's a sea of people screaming.
>
> RFCs 2015 and 3156 are *the only* standards for using OpenPGP in 
> email: inline-PGP was never a standard and always had deep faults. But 
> as the former FAQ maintainer, let me tell you the most obnoxious 
> emails I received were from people outraged the FAQ changed to 
> officially bless RFC-conformant emails and advise against inline-PGP.
>
> And this was over a *documentation change*.
>
> I'm glad your software and workflow supports the latest and greatest. 
> I really am. I wish more people did.
>
> But they don't, and that's why maintainers have to support old and 
> broken behaviors, even at the cost of some bandwidth.

yes but that don't means that because of some GPG bug, I can't send 8bit 
MIME attachment in a signed message....

Yes there will always be people that fear to change, scream, yell, when 
you touch a single bit of a 10TB file... ok... I don't care speaking 
with them... if you never move forward because people are stupid, you'll 
never move forward, because the only 2 things that might be infinite is 
the universe and stupidity... you know how the things advance? by 
ignoring the one that yell and scream, you just make it, activate it by 
default... and they don't even notice that they are using it!

don't say "put an end" : once nobody use it, they will move. I'm sure 
that theses people didn't even noticed that they get UTF-8 encoded 
emails...

Sadely, because people are listening to theses people, most people are 
dropping emails to go on whatsapp... NICE! because nobody move, people 
says "I can't send a video by email, so I now use whatsapp, I don't care 
if it's proprietary, closed, fake privacy, and a jail, I can send my video!"

so... if people get scrambled emails, because they use obsolete 
software, they surely not speak with lot of people, because I doubt 
their software will display a utf-8 smiley.... if people can't read, I 
just say "well, you're email client is too old... it don't meet today 
standards" and that's it... I move... if they finish by having 90% of 
their contacts says the same, they will finish to move.

You have to support oldies, that don´t means that you have to make 
oldies the default....


>
>> so why do we still ENFORCE 7bit ascii for something that is no-where 
>> more used? do you know a single 7bit CPU still there?????
>
> For quite some time PGP-Basics, a Yahoo! Groups mailing list devoted 
> to helping newbies learn OpenPGP, could not support PGP/MIME because 
> Y!Gs mailing list software insisted on munging text attachments. So 
> yeah, old and broken things still exist everywhere.
and there are lot of other free/open source mailing list provider... so 
they just had to move... that's always the same.... you know why 
whatsapp is so popular? because it's stupid people that force other to 
use it... so since you don't want to go out of the "circle" you end 
giving up... and the decadence is there. I don't remember who said that 
you don't have to blame the 10% bad people, but the 90% good people that 
let them do.
>
>> base64, 7bit ascii, EBDICT, base32... quoted printable... are just 
>> oldies... they had their use, they are now just no more needed and 
>> belongs to history... you still use the old 5"1/4 floppy disk?
>
> Friend, the United States nuclear arsenal runs on 8" floppies.
>
> No, I'm not kidding.
well, they will have thought times.... I wonder how their arsenal will 
respond to some sub-sonic nuclear weapon... surely... they will have 
their 8" floppy inserted the time the other knock the door...