8bit mime support? (linked to thunderbird issue)

Andrew Gallagher andrewg at andrewg.com
Wed Jul 30 21:34:22 CEST 2025


On 30 Jul 2025, at 19:35, JL <devm23k73ju29h3r at dolce-energy.com> wrote:
> 
> here what I get when sending a signed message :
> 
> 
> This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 4880 and 3156)
> --------------O0jQavEJzad0tdgqdlXTuPu2
> Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------FWDnkJ83p73oQajQk66iKNQY";
> protected-headers="v1"
> From: XXXXXXX
> Reply-To: XXXXX
> To: YYYYYY
> Message-ID: <8176a3b2-bafa-4339-8776-7768e72a0333 at dolce-energy.com>
> Subject: ZZZZZZ
> 

Yes, and here’s what I get when printing to PDF:

%PDF-1.3
%���������
3 0 obj
<< /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 364 >>
stream
&؀���k_L1lc�`�V�����.)���͋�Ŷ��HZ�}��!�5Y�CZޕ"��1�m�F�gv:��B�G�Y��
�+<���+$|�*r)+?fE���\{��D{S�                                   �Cԗ"�5
                             ]O���H˘�������`�[
                                              �����;��fs��j�@��p=�_�6�@B��sR���2fnM���M����3g:k��&��ه�"��Y�B{ڃ/5U��u��2Q�X�ș��b���(M�UoN�����f򑣁7��_�%�?�O�`p�!Ӌ�dc�D�
r���¢���1�a��&�g���
endstream
endobj
1 0 obj


What’s the problem? Emails and PDFs may *contain* plaintext, but they aren’t raw plaintext, and never have been. The fact that one particular encoding of emails happens to look very similar to plaintext IFF you are using a language that only requires US-ASCII characters is a historical curiosity. Email encodings are completely transparent to the end user if you use an actual email program and not a text editor.

My honest and heartfelt advice is to please stop worrying about it, it’s been a solved problem for several decades now. If you have limited disk space, base64 compresses really efficiently. Please don’t read your emails in vim, you’ll only generate excess cortisol and shorten your lifespan.

A

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