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From: keld@login.dkuug.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen)
Newsgroups: comp.archives
Subject: [text] Re: International character set requirements needed
Keywords: 8-bit data, mail
Message-ID: <1990Dec29.015444.27403@ox.com>
Date: 29 Dec 90 01:54:44 GMT
References: <7625@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1990Dec20.012516.23623@ico.isc.com> <2566@krafla.rhi.hi.is> <1990Dec27.043500.27639@cbnewsk.att.com> <keld.662314579@dkuugin>
Sender: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Reply-To: keld@login.dkuug.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen)
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Archive-name: mail/smtp/8-bit-sendmail/1990-12-27
Archive: dkuug.dk:/pub/sm5.64.8+bit.pa [129.142.96.41]
Original-posting-by: keld@login.dkuug.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen)
Original-subject: Re: International character set requirements needed
Reposted-by: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)

hansen@pegasus.att.com (Tony L. Hansen) writes:

>< From: heimir@rhi.hi.is (Heimir Thor Sverrisson)

>< I can see no reason at all for some stupid mailers to strip off the
>< eighth bit (including Interactive's version of sendmail).  They don't
>< have to - and should not - interpret the contents of the mail they are
>< transmitting.  This is quite different from the troff situation where a
>< program has to know a lot about it's input set.  So why don't you guys
>< simply open up your mailers and be ready with a 8-bit clean version by
>< the end of 1991!

>1991? Why not now? The System V release 4.0 mail program is completely 8-bit
>clean! (If you can find anyplace within SVr4 mail which isn't, I'll
>personally guarantee that the next version of mail which comes from UNIX
>System Laboratories will have a fix for the problem.)

I have also done patches to sendmail 5.61 and 5.64 to do 8-bit mail.
The patches require that you also have IDA installed.
Actually it handles quite some different 8-bit character sets like
8859-1 8859-2 and the rest of the 8859 family and vendor character
sets like the IBM codepages. In all about 60 character sets are
supported in the current release.

>By the way, the SMTP protocol doesn't permit 8-bit data. This limits mailers
>which must send mail using that protocol.

My package also has provisions for sending 8-bit mail thru 7-bit
SMTP in an "encoded ASCII" mode. 

My package is avaliable in dkuug.dk:pub/sm.8+bit.pa sm5.64.8+bit.pa
and ch.shar by anon ftp. By mail you can get it by mailing

                 mail uunet!dkuug.dk!archive
                 Subject: files pub
                 Names: sm.8+bit.pa sm5.64.8+bit.pa ch.shar

Its about 100 kb. Enjoy!

Keld Simonsen