Bug 55898 - support for uuencoded attachments doesn't work
Summary: support for uuencoded attachments doesn't work
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: kmail2
Classification: Applications
Component: general (show other bugs)
Version: 4.9.3
Platform: Compiled Sources Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: kdepim bugs
URL:
Keywords:
: 61941 158583 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2003-03-13 00:56 UTC by Andrey V. Panov
Modified: 2012-11-24 15:57 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:


Attachments
an uuencoded attachment (183.96 KB, text/plain)
2003-05-23 04:36 UTC, Andrey V. Panov
Details
Simple uuencoded email (447 bytes, text/plain)
2009-10-01 03:15 UTC, Jeremy Kerr
Details

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Description Andrey V. Panov 2003-03-13 00:56:19 UTC
Version:           1.5 (using KDE KDE 3.1)
Installed from:    Compiled From Sources
OS:          Linux

Kmail does not support uuencoded attachments. I deal with automatic sending system which is creating emails with uuencoded attachments. I cannot affect the developers of this system. I need to switch every time to mozilla-mail in order to save these attachments.
Comment 1 Stephan Binner 2003-03-13 10:22:47 UTC
I guess this should be a bug report. Can you provide a message showing this 
behaviour? 
Comment 2 Wolf-Michael Bolle 2003-04-29 15:17:13 UTC
I have the same thing here. I understand the talk about how nobody should be sending 
this kind of email. However, it happens! A lot! 
 
Comment 3 Ingo Klöcker 2003-05-04 01:28:19 UTC
Subject: Re:  support for uuencoded attachments doesn't work

Please attach a message with such an attachment to this bug report.

Comment 4 Mark Szentes-Wanner 2003-05-07 10:47:25 UTC
Even Mozilla has serial problems when forwarding uuencoded attachments (mozilla 
handles it as normal text). 
Comment 5 Karl-Heinz Zimmer 2003-05-07 10:53:34 UTC
I am not sure if it was correct to move this report from 'whishlist' to 'bug'. 
 
IMhO this is a missing feature - but not a bug. 
 
Karl-Heinz 
Comment 6 Andrey V. Panov 2003-05-23 04:36:39 UTC
Created attachment 1635 [details]
an uuencoded attachment
Comment 7 Stephan Kulow 2003-09-24 21:44:10 UTC
I don't think, uuencoded are more common to multipart mails. So better 
move it back to wishlist. 
Comment 8 Wolf-Michael Bolle 2003-09-25 09:06:04 UTC
I'm sorry I can't agree with that. In your world (and I don't mean that in a 
bad way, it's a better world than the Windows world I have to survive in), 
people don't use Outlook to send email, and probably every other mailer on this 
planet also knows how to do the standard multipart email thing (I remember 
Netscape Communicator did it since it got released to the open public - which 
was back in what, 97?). Unfortunately, Outlook 2002 still uuencodes 
attachments. *That's* why I stress so much on this stupid issue. So, *please* 
get it off the wishlist and put it whereever urgently missing features go. 
Kopete does msn, koffice does word/excel/powerpoint, and konqueror does smb. 
Why is kmail doing Outlook an unimportant item for the wishlist? Don't feel 
flamed but I don't get it. 
 
Michael 
 
PS: The KDE version for this item can be increased to 3.1.3. 
 
Comment 9 Thiago Macieira 2003-09-25 23:40:42 UTC
Write an e-mail to one of your Outlook friends and "accidentally" put the word begin in the beginning of 
a line and watch it choke trying to decode an uuencoded attachment that is not there. 
 
This report asks for a missing feature, so it's a wishlist. It's not a bug because it's never been 
implemented. So it's already in the right place. 
 
PS: the version in the report is that of the KMail version, not KDE's. 
Comment 10 Marc Mutz 2003-09-28 01:56:14 UTC
*** Bug 61941 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 Wolf-Michael Bolle 2003-09-29 15:10:40 UTC
I will have a lot of fun trying that out ;-) 
 
Throw it on the wishlist if you have to. I just hope there is a way to classify 
wishes from "would be cool" up to "would create compatibility with xyz". 
 
PS: I didn't expect it to be a problem to extrapolate from KMail 1.5 / KDE 3.1 
to KDE 3.1.3 / KMail 1.5.3. 
 
To change the direction of this discussion a little bit: How hard would it be 
in KMail to add parsing the ASCII part of an email for uuencoded stuff and feed 
that into the attachment handling? 
 
Michael 
 
Comment 12 Marc Mutz 2003-09-30 11:24:30 UTC
Subject: Re:  support for uuencoded attachments doesn't work

On Monday 29 September 2003 15:10, Wolf-Michael Bolle wrote:
<snip>
> To change the direction of this discussion a little bit: How hard
> would it be in KMail to add parsing the ASCII part of an email for
> uuencoded stuff and feed that into the attachment handling?
<snip>

Hacking it in? Probably easy.

Doing it right? Very hard. Comparable to PGP clearsigning and that one 
is already ubiquitous in KMail. Look how many files #include <kpgp.
h>...

There is a reason why uuencode and clearsigning are both deprecated: 
Combining such things is combinatorically infeasible.

Outlook can be configured to not send uuencoded mail, or at least send 
them as MIME attachments with Content-Transfer-Encoding: x-uuencode, 
which we support for reading.

You can extract the attachments from uuencode-mails by piping them 
trough a script that calls uudecode and writes the results to a 
attachment-dump directory with a constructed name. Search the 
kmail@kde.org archives. Or use KNode.

This feature has _very_ low priority, and a steadily decreasing one, 
too, as uuencoded mails get more and more uncommon. My personal barrier 
for patch-acceptance is very high with this one. You'd need to design, 
write and refactor quite a bit of code to provide generic hooks for 
abstracting the various just-do-it-inline methods, such as PGP 
clearsigning, inline uu-, yenc- and base64 encoded "attachments", geek 
codes, etc. But _if_ you've invested that much energy into it, rest 
assured that I'll help you get it polished for inclusion.

Marc

Comment 13 Jiri Navratil 2005-12-18 05:47:40 UTC
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***
Comment 14 Oded Arbel 2006-01-26 10:32:38 UTC
Just a "me too" note. Apparently some versions of outlook express are set by default to send out uuencoded "attachments", and the persons operating these MUA can't be bothered to change their setup. Currently, when one specific client is emailing me, I have to go to mozilla mail (which otherwise I don't touch).

This bug is also related to closed tickets Bug 6402 (that's an old one :-), Bug 36761 and Bug 115081 which is rather new and talks about x-uue encoded MIMA parts which I never encountered but comment #12 above mentions that it should work, but said ticket claims otherwise and was closed WONTFIX.
Comment 15 Thomas McGuire 2008-02-29 20:31:29 UTC
*** Bug 158583 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 16 Jeremy Kerr 2009-10-01 03:15:58 UTC
Created attachment 37278 [details]
Simple uuencoded email

Here's a very simple testcase: a hand-written multipart mail with a uuencoded attachment. When I open the (text/plain) attachment, I see the uuencoded text, rather than the original.

My travel agent is sending me invoices as uuencoded PDF attachments (naturally, okular chokes on the uuencoded data). Looks like their automated invoicing software is using uuencode.
Comment 17 Myriam Schweingruber 2012-08-18 08:01:59 UTC
Thank you for your feature request. Kmail1 is currently unmaintained so we are closing all wishes. Please feel free to reopen a feature request for Kmail2 if it has not already been implemented.
Thank you for your understanding.
Comment 18 Luigi Toscano 2012-08-19 01:04:27 UTC
Instead of creating a new feature request, please confirm here if the wishlist is still valid for kmail2.
Comment 19 Jiri Navratil 2012-08-19 03:45:20 UTC
not needed by me

I think, this is a basic feature for an email client.

but again, I'm not using kmail anymore, so not needed by me

thx

---
Jiri Navratil


19. 8. 2012 v 3:04, Luigi Toscano <luigi.toscano@tiscali.it>:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55898
> 
> Luigi Toscano <luigi.toscano@tiscali.it> changed:
> 
>           What    |Removed                     |Added
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                 CC|                            |luigi.toscano@tiscali.it
>         Resolution|UNMAINTAINED                |WAITINGFORINFO
> 
> --- Comment #18 from Luigi Toscano <luigi.toscano@tiscali.it> ---
> Instead of creating a new feature request, please confirm here if the wishlist
> is still valid for kmail2.
> 
> -- 
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You voted for the bug.
Comment 20 Bernd Oliver Sünderhauf 2012-11-24 07:36:03 UTC
UUencode is getting less and less prevalent.
However, this is still valid for kmail2, component UI.
Maybe kmail2's code is more modular, so this can be plugged in easily.
Comment 21 Bernd Oliver Sünderhauf 2012-11-24 07:43:33 UTC
Sorry, component "general", as there are so few components available in kmail2.
And, I'd say: Low importance.
Comment 22 Luigi Toscano 2012-11-24 15:57:15 UTC
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***