🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 23 Mar 2013 14:19:29 +0900, Miles Bader <mi...@gnu.org> wrote:

>Rin Stowleigh <rstow...@gmail.com> writes:
>>>FWIW, his post displays fine in this text-only newsreader...
>>>
>>>I imagine the real issue is that your newsreader doesn't grok MIME, or
>>>can't handle UTF-8.
>>
>> Sorry but all attempts thus far are wrong..
>>
>> It's simply Base 64 encoding.
>
>It's MIME base-64 transfer-encoding; from the headers:
>
>     Mime-Version: 1.0
>     Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed; delsp=yes
>     Content-Transfer-Encoding: Base64

MIME, in this case is sort of like the type of envelope the message
was sent in (i.e. it's really referring to the equivalent of
"attachment protocol").  UTF-8 can be best thought of as "how many
bytes will it really take to move across the wire" and has nothing to
do with the actual contents in this case (see minor caveat below).

John's message was asking about the message itself, the "chunk of
gibberish" with "code-related meaning" as he put it (almost spit my
drink cracking up typing that).

In other words, its just like recognizing Spanish when you see it and
distinguishing it from French or anything else.  The characters were
very clearly expressed in Base64 and it really made no difference
whether it was being expressed in UTF-8, UTF-16 or anything else. MIME
is simply the mechanism used to attach it to the message and not
related to the contents.  UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32 et all has more to do
with how many bytes you need to cram the information into than it does
the information itself.

A string of Base64 encoded text is what it is.  Unless it's encrypted
it is straight forward to convert as long as you recognize what it is,
that's all I'm saying.

Since he's using an antiquated newsreader (Forte Agent v1.11!  LOL!  I
think he got a retro discount on GOG), there is a remote possibility
that he is seeing something different than he posted, but I doubt it.
I'm sure he saw the (even granny-newsreader friendly text) starting
with "T24gU2F0LCAyMyBN".