Re: [VM] MIME encoding/decoding

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Wed, 16 Jul 2014, Uday Reddy wrote:

> VM has traditionally shipped with C programs for MIME encoding/decoding.
> Rob F created an entire Unix-like infrastructure (Make files, configure,
> autoconf etc.) pretty much to handle just these.  If we get rid of these C
> programs, VM can be shipped just like any other emacs library.

> Both GNU Emacs and XEmacs now have built-in encoding/decoding functionality
> for base64.  So, we can use them.  For the Quoted Printable format,
> emacs-lisp seems to be fast enough.  Gnus has been using it for ages and
> everybody seems happy with that.

These C programs were first shipped with in VM 6.76 which was released
in September 2000. This is somewhat surprising, because at that time
Emacs (version 20.4 then) already included the base64-decode-region
etc. functions.

> So, I am thinking of getting rid of the C programs for MIME.  Does anybody
> see any problem with that?

It may well be that they have outlived their purpose. But before
removing them, please make sure that it doesn't have any negative
impact on performance.

Ulrich