[Mimedefang] base64 to quoted-printable

[Paul Murphy]

>Unfortunately, it's an amateur radio BBS written in the 80s that only understands plain text.
> It's still extremely useful and widely used, especially in emergency comms

So worthwhile investing some cash and getting it updated so that it can cope with the modern world?  And presumably the receiving equipment is 8-bit capable and not also something from the 80s?

As Dianne has already pointed out to you, converting everything to Quoted-Printable doesn't necessarily make it more readable.  In the most extreme case, you'll encode spaces as well as extended characters, and especially when you're trying to pass addresses or telephone numbers then this could turn out to be problematic  - try this one out:

We're=20off=20to=20the=20seaside,=20where=20the=20temperature=3D20=C2=B0C=20:-)=20=20El=20Ni=C3=B1o=20has=20some=20benefits!=20=20Call=20me=20on=20(+44)=20123=20456=207890

Paste it into http://www.webatic.com/run/convert/qp.php if you're struggling.

Now tell me that in an emergency situation you can extract the phone number quickly and without errors, and that you got the temperature from that message.  If an address has Spanish, French, German, etc accented characters, they'll also be encoded rather than converted to the nearest unaccented character, so in the example above " El Niño" becomes "El=20Ni=C3=B1o" rather than "El Nino".  

Eventually this will come back to bite you.  Time to bring it at least into the 90s, if not into the 21st century...

Paul.