From: "Kari E. Hurtta" <Kari.Hurtta@dionysos.fmi.fi>
Message-Id: <199512010713.JAA09255@dionysos.fmi.fi>
Subject: Re: On the use of 8-bit transfer
To: moore@cs.utk.edu (Keith Moore)
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 1995 09:13:01 +0200 (EET)
Cc: MAILNEWS-L@SEGATE.SUNET.SE, drums@cs.utk.edu, ratause@dsv.su.se,
        moore@cs.utk.edu
Reply-To: Kari.Hurtta@dionysos.fmi.fi (Kari E. Hurtta), drums@cs.utk.edu
In-Reply-To: <199511301940.OAA19789@wilma.cs.utk.edu> from "Keith Moore" at Nov 30, 95 02:40:40 pm
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Keith Moore kirjoittaa:
> > If 8BITMIME extension is available, it will take care of conversion
> > to 7-bit in event when some MTA does not support 8BITMIME.
> 
> Not necessarily.  A server supporting 8BITMIME is not required
> to perform such a conversion, though it will often be performed
> in practice.
> 
> If a SMTP server supporting 8BITMIME finds it is unable to relay
> the message over an 8-bit clean path...

In practice 8BITMIME gateways will do conversion even when conversion is not
possible/legal (and produce incorrect protocol output). That is: Instead of 
bouncing of message. :-)

[ But this no longer be in topic of MAILNEWS-L. ]

[ At least this failure mode exists in sendmail 8.7 although it requires
  quite much imagination construct message what is valid MIME mime message
  (ie. not protocl violation in input) and produce protocol violation
  with all other cases except when message is bounced.

  Well, many other 8BITMIME gateway what I have seen, fails handle correctly
  such simple things as nested multipart structures ... ]