Re: [idn] Hotmail's 8-bit handling

[Patrik Fältström <paf@cisco.com>]

--On 01-07-20 00.14 +0000 "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to> wrote:

> Patrik writes:
>> Now, do you think Hotmail can handle other characters than US-ASCII in
>> headers (header encoding of for example my last name
> 
> More details, please.

(a) I registered at Hotmail, using a Microsoft Internet Explorer Browser
just to be sure I used a Microsoft product talking with a Microsoft service
(b) It asked about my name, and I entered "Fältström" as my last name
(c) I composed an email, and entered Swedish characters in both the subject
and the body of the email
(d) I sent the mail to a host where I could look at exactly what arrives
over SMTP from the Hotmail system

Result:

(1) The From: header look like this (well, not really, because I now use a
Mac, and there is a translation of ISO 8859-1 to the local Mac charset
which makes things not exactly what they should, but anyway):

From: "Patrik F?ltstr?m" <pfaltstr@hotmail.com>

I.e. my last name include 8bit characters, and it is the ISO 8859-1 ones
which are sent directly on the wire.

No header encoding of the name.

(2) The Subject: have the same problem as the From: header.

Subject: Nu s?nder jag en r?ksm?rgÂs

ISO 8859-1 without any header encoding at all.

(3) The MIME-type is not correct. It is the following:

Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed

No charset parameter.

The SMTP server I have do handle the ESMTP extension 8bitmime so I didn't
expect ant content-transfer-encoding.



I.e. my conclusion of working with charset issues in Internet protocols now
for 10 years is that all people should try to change their native language
to something which is not english for a couple of months and see how bad
implemented internationalization and handling of non-US-ASCII is in
applications. This regardless of whether the transport is 8bit clean or not.

     Patrik