new email encodings

[Martin Draper]

I have run across strange formating or encoding in emails from Outlook 2003 and from PHP Mailer and I hoping might be able to shed some light on the problem.

I have been testing an email client for web based email reader. The problem first showed up in emails from outlook 2003. All the spaces in the email appear to be replaced by "=20" and there were "=09" like this

This=20email=20contains=20confidential=20information=20intended=20for=20th=
=09{font-family:"Franklin=20Gothic=20Book";

I recevied another email from this time PHP Mailer 1.7.3 and it contained =3D
is place of characters like this

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=

I checked the encoding systems on the net with no luck. Has anyone else encountered the problem and have any ideas.

[Eric Pearson]

Martin --

You probably know this, but the =numbers are the hex values of characters.

=20 space
=09 tab
=3D equal sign

What program are you using to receive and view the emails? I use Outlook 2003 and I haven't seen this problem.

(Does anybody else find it amusing that an equal sign would be encoded with a string that includes an equal sign?)

-- Eric

[Martin Draper]

Hi Eric, I am writing a web based email client from scratch.

What gets me is that if =20 is a space why not use a space as it takes one character and not three, same with the equals sign and what do you do if want to send emails with text of "=20" !

[Mike Stefanik]

It's called quoted-printable encoding, and is actually a common encoding method. It's used to encode text messages that may not be 7-bit safe for transport and/or to ensure that the content is not "mangled" by an MTA during delivery. For example, some transports may change unencoded whitespace during transport, such as folding long lines of text and so on. Using QP encoding ensures that it's received as sent once it has been decoded. Using QP encoding is particilarlly common when sending HTML formatted emails.

[Erik Christensen]

You could try if the code referred to below could solve the problem. It is designed to translate those special character codes in the received email 'source code' back to normal characters.

http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pbforums/showthread.php?t=38876

Best regards,

Erik