Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2016 00:29:05 -0500
Reply-To: Bill Glenn <idahobill@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Bill Glenn <idahobill@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: block of random characters
Full disclosure, I'm no expert, but here's what I know about this
problem.
1. I first raised this issue of unreadable text back in December of
2009. I was told by a moderator that the problem was on my end, but I
know that not to be the case.
2. The block of random characters are not random at all. These
characters are the result of messages being encoded with Base64
encoding.
3. You can convert Base64 encoding by copying and pasting the message
into a Base64 decoder such as this one:
https://www.opinionatedgeek.com/codecs/base64decoder
4. The Vanagon List, aka Gerry, operates in plain text only; it cannot
convert Base64 encoding to plain text, so these unreadable messages are
going into the archives just as they are: unreadable.
5. In digest mode Gerry compiles messages from the archives and sends
them out periodically as a group of messages. If a message is
unreadable in the archives, it will be unreadable when you receive it in
digest mode.
6. If you are not receiving messages in digest mode, it is my
understanding that each individual message is relayed directly from the
sender to you, without going through Gerry. For those of you who say
you have never experienced a problem, you are likely not receiving
messages in digest mode, and your email client is decoding the Base64
message and converting it to plain text.
7. The unfortunate aspect to all this, beside those of us in digest
mode being unable to easily read some messages (without manually
decoding them), is that the archives are being corrupted with messages
that also cannot be read without manually decoding them. See for
yourself by going to the archives to peruse the messages:
http://gerry.vanagon.com/archives/vanagon.html
8. The solution is for everyone on the list to ensure that you are
sending messages in plain text, nothing else. As I said, I'm no expert,
so I cannot tell you how to do this within all the various email
clients.
It was my hope back in 2009, and remains now, that someone acquainted
with the various email clients and the means by which one selects for
plain text, and/or the means by which the coding/decoding information is
contained in the email headers, could provide a tutorial for fixing this
problem. I would if I could, but this is way outside my area of
expertise.