There are two. Either the list software can be upgraded to actually
not mangle properly-formatted messages (or at least do so in a
standards-compliant way), or I can modify my client to:
1. Use only US-ASCII (Not even Latin-1)
2. Always wrap lines at 68-70 characters per line
3. Never, ever, send an equals sign.
4. Never, ever, begin a line with the word "From".
5. Never end a line with white space.
Doing #1 essentially renders my whole email program unable to handle
speakers of foreign languages, Greek letters (omega and mu being the
obvious losses), and basically going back to the days of the Apple 2
in terms of character support.
It turns out I already do #2, but it is done in such a way that does
not annoy sighted users of modern graphical email clients who would
complain (and have complained) that my emails came out as narrow
columns. The MIME standards have defined the method to do this,
however it violates #5: Lines that are part of the same paragraph end
in a blank space, which tells the receiver to combine this and the
next line and reformat to fit the size of the window. This standard
dates back to the days of Windows 3.1.
Beginning a line with "From" in an email is sort of illegal. A
number of techniques have been developed over the years. Way back
when people actually had DOS email clients, you would prefix the F in
"From" with a greater-than character as if you were quoting it.
Once quoted-printable became popular, it became standard to replace
the F with equals followed by 46, the code for the letter F.
An equals sign is illegal in quoted-printable encoding. You must
escape it to equals 3D.
The mailing list takes all input and runs it through quoted-printable
whether it needs it or not, even if it is already in that format!
That means you get double-encoding. So that F in From becomes equals
3D46. And the list illegally fails to identify what it did to the
message, rendering it impossible for your email client, which KNOWS
WHAT QUOTED-PRINTABLE IS, I promise you, and decode it.
So in short, what you expect me to do is break my email program so
that it is as broken as the list software. Respectfully, I will not
be doing that. If I can come up with a means of making the above
changes for this list, and this list alone, I will do it. But the
fault is not with my messages. The list software is broken, the
developer of it needs to be beaten about the head and shoulders for
releasing something so obviously in violation of accepted Internet
standards, and I cannot personally be held responsible for every
outdated bit of buggy software in use around the world today.
I attempted on my end to fix the problem on receipt of messages, and
it has largely worked for me. I offered my (admittedly very
technical) solution to the list, hoping it might be useful. But
really, the best and only proper solution is for the list owner to
upgrade the software running the list. In fact, it’s probably a good
idea since any software this old is likely a security nightmare
waiting to happen.
I don’t mean to sound overly angry about this, but I feel as though
members of this list are blaming ME because it is MY messages that
"appear" broken. In fact that isn’t true: Messages from several
others (and indeed any others if they fail to follow all five of the
criteria outlined above) will be mangled by the list software. My
messages are properly formatted when they leave my computer. What
the list software does to it is beyond my control.
Joseph - KF7QZC
On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 03:56:03PM -0400, ColleenRoth wrote:
>Hi,
>Those extra symbols are not easy to skip over.
>I can not know what you can do about it but I am sure there is a fix.
>Colleen, N8TNV;
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: John Miller <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Date: Thursday, Aug 25, 2011 03:46:35 PM
>Subject: Re: programming the wouxun radios
>
>>
>>
>> your email, is not easy to read with all the =20 symbols in it that get
>> worse as you go on.
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "T. Joseph Carter" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2011 3:28 PM
>> Subject: Re: programming the wouxun radios
>>
>>
>> >I think you mean CHIRP. I just took one look at the code that reads=20
>> > and writes the radio (since it is not accessible on the Mac) and=20
>> > recoiled in horror. X=Ebleb=80=99s pretty incomplete.
>> >
>> > I have asked the KG-UV Commander author, Jim Mitchell, if he=Ebleb=80=99d be=
>> > =20
>> > willing to supply me with more complete programming instructions. =20
>> > Since I just sent the email last night, I dunno if he=Ebleb=80=99ll talk to =
>> > me=20
>> > or not.
>> >
>> > X=Ebleb=80=99s easy to read/write the radio on Mac and Linux since UNIXes a=
>> > re=20
>> > designed to make serial port access easy, so cooking up a CLI app=20
>> > that can read the KG-UV Commander CSV files (and perhaps those of=20
>> > CHIRP as well) should be quite manageable.
>> >
>> > I=Ebleb=80=99m willing to write it in such a way that data types and callbac=
>> > ks=20
>> > for a GUI exist, but I=Ebleb=80=99d either be writing in platform-independen=
>> > t C=20
>> > or or Python, so anything written would have to interface with that. =20
>> > Preferably in such a way that changes to the underlying code need n=20
>> > require large changes to the GUI since I have little desire to=20
>> > actually learn the Windows API which makes me want to lpcsVOMIT.
>> >
>> > Joseph KF7QZC
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 10:06:40AM com0400, Buddy Brannan wrote:
>> >arThe Wouxun software is sort of accessible, but you do have to click=20
>> >arthe mouse pointer in the channel table in order for regular Windows=20
>> >arkeys to work, i.e. tab and shift+tab and so on. Also, the form=20
>> >arlabels aren't right, so you have to sort of keep track of the=20
>> >arsettings.
>> >ar
>> >arI haven't gotten the KG-UV Commander software to work myself. S=20
>> >arfar, the Linux program that works also from a Windows command line=20
>> >arand is manipulated via CSV files has been the best option for me.
>> >>--
>> >arBuddy Brannan, KB5ELV Erie, PA
>> >arPhone: (814) 860-3194 or 888-75-BUDDY
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