OT: MIME content type for email

[Brian K. White]

Bob Rasmussen wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Hoping somebody has a quick answer to a quick question.
> 
> Somebody using Outlook Express to email a PDF attachment, received by 
> somebody on a Mac. File appears to have been corrupted as per CR/LF -> CR. 
> How can one prevent this?
> 
> Attachment appears to have 
>    Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
> Is that the problem? 
> 
> Can this be controlled in Outlook Express?

That sounds like it must be such a ridiculously common operation that 
theres just no way that's the problem. How many outlook express users 
must have emailed a pdf to a mac user since all 3 of outlook express, 
pdf, and macs have all coexisted?

quoted printable probably does allow the receiver to munge what it 
thinks are line-endings, instead of octet stream or application pdf, but 
that's probably is a symptom of a problem at some earlier stage, not 
the root ptoblem in itself. ie: why did outlook express choose quoted 
printable? why did outlook express believe the file was merely plain text?

If it's a valid pdf but not the usual compressed binary form, maybe your 
simplest answer is the same as when mailing any other file that looks 
like plain text but must be preserved exactly as if it were binary data, 
zip it and attach the zip instead.

-- 
bkw