Re: reading mail problems (was Re: Choose index into array of probabilities)

[Joshua Rigler]

Quentin Spencer wrote:
> Dushan Mitrovich wrote:
> > Would some one tell me what's going on with some of these replies to 
> > the Octave helpline?  Most of them are fine, just plain text, but these
> > from <soren> all arrive looking like this, which I can't read.  Can't
> > people just write in plain text anymore?  Or at least include that with
> > the fancy style if they feel there's a real need for the latter.
> >
> > - Dushan Mitrovich
> >   
>
> I've never had any problem reading Soren's mails. However, looking at 
> the raw message text I do see what you are referring to. Looking at the 
> headers, I think the following lines are the key:
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
>
> For comparison, your e-mail has this:
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
> I think either your e-mail program is not capable of reading the 
> encoding, or maybe it is not correctly configured.
>
> Quentin

I know this is a little off-topic, but for what it's worth, I've noticed 
problems with Soren's emails too, although not exactly as described.  I 
can read the text, but no newlines get inserted...at least when I read 
the messages in either Pine or Thunderbird version 1.5.0.5.

Actually, I just did a quick check of Soren's header files and noticed 
something interesting.  My department's email server attempts (poorly, I 
guess) to convert the base64 into something readable.  The line I get 
that most of you probably won't is:

  X-MIME-Autoconverted: from base64 to 8bit by myhost.mydomain id 
k7PAgAx28195

I wonder how one might get around this problem.

-EJR