domingo 03 octubre 2021 :: 1144hrs (UTC +01:00)
Hi @steveshank
I have just read your problem. If we were approached about this issue we would offer an explanation for a fee, to put most people off, though unlikely to be asked a further fee to re-write the code. Basically we only work with clients on contract and resolution of this sort of issue would normally be included.
However, as I canât get out on my JetSki this morning because of a brief thunder & lightening storm, here is a brief explanation:
When you see something like =3D, what youâre seeing is a single character in whatâs called âquoted-printableâ encoding. â=3Dâ is, in fact, an equal sign, so what you have in your example is ==.
What you can call âfunny charactersâ or character sequences. They always begin with an equals sign, though. For example, things like =0D=0A and =3D appear throughout html message source code.
Youâd think that with plain-text email having been around for as long as it has, issues like this would have been resolved by now.
The problem is that thereâs âplain textâ email, and then thereâs âplain textâ email.
No thatâs correct not a typo â not all âplain textâ is created equal.
So, when you see something like =3D, what youâre seeing is a single character of âquoted-printableâ encoding.
A few examples: â=3Dâ is, in fact, an equal sign. =0D is a Carriage Return (CR), =0A is a Line Feed (LF), and =0D=0A is a CRLF combination. CR, LF, and CRLF are all used to indicate the end of a line of text in plain text emails. In fact, any character can be represented as a three character â=â sequence in quoted-printable. â=00A=00s=00k=00 =00S=00k=00y=00b=00a=00tâ, for example, is âAsk Skybat!â in full quoted-printable encoding.
Quoted-printable is one of several encodings used to get around the fact that not all mail software (and in the past, not all network transports) can handle what are called ânon-printableâ characters, or certain types of non-alphanumeric characters.
CR and LF, for example, donât cause anything to be displayed; they just âmean somethingâ: the end of a line. Thatâs why theyâre called ânon-printableâ.
Non-printable characters in email messages can confuse some email software, particularly older, legacy systems. The work-around is to represent them in a way that doesnât confuse the old mailers.
When an email message uses quoted-printable, one of the hidden headers â the information you donât normally see â explicitly says so.
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
If youâre seeing the quoted-printable characters in their quoted-printable form, that header is either missing, malformed, or itâs been overlooked.
In the case of your mailing list, the approvals are probably arriving in some kind of ârawâ form. Your mailing list software has probably removed or overridden the header information. As a result, your mail program doesnât know that it should decode the encoded characters. It sees it as unencoded plain text email and displays it as-is or not at all.
In short you will need to speak to whoever is encoding and or mailing out for you.
Some years back I created a useful tool for encoding email links for html insertion using quoted-printable.
Go to: https://www.compucall.com
Click any of the email links to open your email client to view an example.
Then at the top of the page in the âdrop downâ click âMailtoâ button for the tool.
¥Saludos desde la soleada Valencia en España!
ÂĄMis mejores deseos y mantente a salvo!
Skybat
[email protected]
Hablo español, luego portugués e inglés, con conocimiento de varios otros idiomas.
