Hi Joseph,

I figured all along it was the server.  I wonder why this server is so 
antiquated.  I belong to 14 mailing lists and this is the only one I have to 
make sure I have configured to send in plain text only.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "T. Joseph Carter" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2011 4:04 PM
Subject: Re: Quoted-printable crap on messages


On the contrary, I wrote the script so you don't have to know any=20
Python.  *grin*  You just need to know how to configure your mail=20
client.  Though probably if you're running a mail client in which you=20
could easily add the filter, odds are you are using Linux or possibly=20
a Mac as I am.

The problem isn=E2=80=99t trying to get messages int' =E2=80=9Cplain text=
=E2=80=9D form, it=E2=80=99s=20
that the mailing list does this thing to messages it does not think=20
are =E2=80=9Cplain text enough=E2=80=9D which nobody does anymore.  It=E2=
=80=99s called=20
Quoted-Printable encoding (and even back in the early to mid 1990s=20
when it was a regular fixture, we called it =E2=80=9CQuoted-Unreadable=E2=
=80=9D,=20
hence the name of my script!)

Quoted-Printable is understood by all major email clients nowadays,=20
so long as the message contains basic headers indicating it=E2=80=99s the=
re!

On this message you are reading now, these headers should be present:

MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=3Dutf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

They aren=E2=80=99t, however, so you=E2=80=99re probably seeing a lot of =
garbage in=20
my message with equal signs and hexadecimal numbers representing=20
anything from spaces at the end of my lines to the equals sign=20
between charset and utf-8 above, and the various quote marks and=20
apostrophes used in this email.

Fixing it properly would require a large amount of someone else=E2=80=99s=
=20
time.  I can more or less solve the problem in just a few minutes of=20
my own, so that is what I did.

Joseph - KF7QZC


On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 09:08:44AM -0400, Ron Canazzi wrote:
>Hi Joseph,
>
>If you are using Linux with Orca--which judging by your post I think you=
 may
>be, with the accessible version of Linux called Vinux, people are using
>Evolution Mail--a Windows-like full featured mail client, which you can
>configure to display messages in plain text only--just as you can with
>Windows based clients like Windows Live Mail and Outlook.
>
>While I'm sure your method works, anyone reading this would have to know=
 a
>lot about python scripting and other Linux based coding--which I dare sa=
y
>most people on this list have no idea of.
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "T. Joseph Carter" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Friday, August 19, 2011 2:26 AM
>Subject: Quoted-printable crap on messages
>
>
>Alas, it is 2011, and Quoted-Unreadable is not yet dead!
>
>Messages from this list are encoded in it if they contain even the
>slightest non-ASCII character or long line.  Only, it doesn't put a
>header on the message telling modern clients to do the decoding
>automatically.
>
>Fortunately, I use a text-based client called mutt, which allows all
>kinds of folder and other kinds of hooks.  I do not know if anybody
>else can benefit from this but I offer it in case it might be useful
>to someone:
>
>In my .muttrc:
>
>folder-hook . 'unset display_filter'
>folder-hook '+Gmail/ham\.blind-hams' \
>'set display_filter=3D"~/Library/bin/quoted-unreadable"'
>
>
>For any folder, the first line un-sets the display_filter option.
>Without this, all messages would be assumed to be in quoted-printable
>format and thus decoded.  We don't want that, since it is only this
>list that uses QP without telling the client about it!
>
>The second line (and third via continuation backslash) matches on the
>precise name of the folder "Gmail/ham.blind-hams" located in my mail
>directory.  It then sets the display filter for this list alone to be
>the script named quoted-unreadable in ~/Library/bin (which kind of
>mixes the UNIX and Mac paradigms a little, but I couldn't think of a
>better name for a bin directory than, well, bin.)
>
>Anyway, here's the script, written using Python:
>
>#! /usr/bin/env python
>
>import sys
>import quopri
>
># Mutt sends displayed headers through this hook, ignore them!
>show_header =3D True
>while show_header:
>hdr_line =3D sys.stdin.readline()
>sys.stdout.write(hdr_line)
>if len(hdr_line.rstrip('\r\n')) =3D=3D 0:
>show_header =3D False
>
># The entire body of the message is filtered with a single line:
>quopri.decode(sys.stdin, sys.stdout)
>
>
>Yup, that's it.  The heavy lifting is done by quopri, which is
>apparently something you probably already have installed if you've
>got a full Python library.
>
>If you can filter the body alone, you need just the two import lines
>and the call to quopri.decode.
>
>I haven't the faintest idea how you'll use this on anything other
>than Mutt, and yes I know the way I handle headers could be improved.
>Much could be done if I were to make the header handling optional, so
>that I could make effective use of this one-line-wonder elsewhere
>(because for example I have seen on this list the occasional
>double-QP which my filter makes no attempt to solve.  But there you
>have it.
>
>It finally got annoying, so I fixed it on my end.  It's taken longer
>to share the result than it did to fix the problem and test it, so I
>hope it's useful to somebody.  *grin*
>
>Joseph - KF7QZC