[GTALUG] mailing list issue

[Myles Braithwaite]

D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> I'm receiving much of my email through an ancient server.  I hope to fix 
> that.
> 
> Some of my messages from the GTALUG list are dammaged.  Basically, the 
> newlines are lost.  I suspect that this is due to my server, but at least 
> some of the problem is the GTALUG list handling software.
> 
> For example, Chris Browne just sent a message to the list and CCed me.  
> The copy that went directly was fine.  The copy that went through the
> GTALUG is mangled.
> 
> The direct copy was transmitted in plain text, UTF-8:
> 	Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> The copy from the list had been changed to base64 by the list sofware:
> 	X-MIME-Autoconverted: from base64 to 8bit by gw-d.mimosa.com id v2EGxaHB032483
> 
> I expect that my systems MIME Autoconverter is wrong but why is the
> list software creating base64 where none existed before?
> 
> Other observations:
> 
> Not all my mail goes through that gateway.  The simple (non-MIME) messages 
> that come via another gateway seem to all be in base 64.  Why?
> 
> Not all my GTALUG mail that goes through that gateway gets mangled.
> For example, the message about dinner that I sent to the list didn't get 
> mangled.
> 
> This seems to have started happening in late September.

Mailman (actually the underlying Python email library) converts emails
to base64 if whose character set is UTF-8 on English lists (it is
avoiding creating messages containing characters with high order bit set
as not all METs support 8BITMIME SMTP (Yahoo and Outlook.com)).

If we were to remove the `msg_footer`, that three line footer we have on
every email, then Mailman would just forward as is.

Just another example of why email lists suck in 2017.