Re: [Pan-users] Pan and yenc encoding of binary files

[Duncan]

Cipher Cipher posted on Mon, 11 Feb 2013 10:56:38 -0500 as excerpted:

> I made two changes to this upload that he can read, despite the error
> message:  One was to change permissions on the file to make it
> executable.
> I read a post somewhere where that solved a similar problem for
> someone.

That's just... strange.  Certainly a bug in agent if that's a problem.

> I also added "Yenc" to the subject line as he recommended...

That one is AFAIK valid.  The original yenc spec called for yenc in the 
subject line (tho I've forgotten the precise details on placement, 
capitalization, etc), and in fact, that has been one of the criticisms of 
the spec, as it seems rather "amateurish" and more a hack than 
appropriate for a general RFC-level attachment specification, to many.

Despite not really being appropriate as an official standard, however, 
yenc happened to come along at the right time, and because it reduced 
encoding overhead dramatically, allowing major posters to post more 
material in less time (downloaders liked it too, as long as they could 
decode it, but it's the uploaders that drive adoption of such things), 
yenc's usage spread rapidly, and it quickly became the default if 
unofficial standard, replacing the less efficient MIME/base64 and UUE 
encoding formats.

There was talk of formalizing it into an RFC standard as an extension to 
MIME, killing the subject line requirement as part of the process, and I 
think it might have actually happened, except that adoption was so fast 
by the time the standards groups started working on it, more than half 
the net was using it and changing things would have been more trouble 
than it was worth.  The posters really DID drive things.  But there's 
probably some semi-adopted MIME-yenc-extension standard somewhere...

Anyway, I'm not sure yenc in the subject remains a requirement in 
practice these days, but AFAIK, it's still strictly part of the spec, and 
anything omitting it will thus not be strictly compliant.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman