Subject field corruption

[Ken Murchison]

Einar Indridason wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 08:57:38PM +0400, NOwlar wrote:
> 
>>I use Postfix 2.0.10 with TLS patch, cyrus-imapd 2.1.13, sasl 2.1.13
>>The problem is as follow:
>>When a message with russian charset characters (KOI8-R, WIN1251) in Subject
>>field arrives or is moved into the Sent Items folders by Outlook Express,
>>each russian character is replaced by an X (ex: Re: XXXX XXXX mazda 626
>>XXXX). I happens only when the Subject field is without charaterset
>>specification.
>>
>>I dumped mailboxes with cyrdump, the Xes are in.
>>
>>What can be wrog?
>>
>>I will appreciate any help.
>>Max.
> 
> 
> Cyrus kills the 8th bit character in the header, and replaces it with 'X'.  
> There is a configuration option, that would discard unconditionally every 
> message with the 8th bit turned on in the headers.  Luckily you are *only* 
> seeing the 'X' inserted instead.
> 
> In Cyrus-2.0.16 one file needed to be patched.  In the latest Cyrus-es
> you apparently need to patch 2 files.
> 
> In my opinion, this breaks the "Be liberal in what you accept, strict in
> what you send".


There is a difference between being liberal and being foolish.

> 
> Unfortunately (regardless of what the developers of Cyrus think) there
> are still software out there that generates email messages with 8th bit
> headers.

The users of such broken software should either pressure the author(s) 
to fix it or abandon it.  Darwin's theory of evolution applies equally 
as well to software as it does to plants/animals.

It has been mentioned MANY times that even if Cyrus was to accept 8-bit 
headers, there is no reasonable way to determine the character set.


-- 
Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
Software Engineer     21 Princeton Place
716-662-8973 x26      Orchard Park, NY 14127
--PGP Public Key--    http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp