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Date:      Thu, 19 Dec 1996 00:48:41 +1100 (EST)
From:      David Nugent <davidn>
To:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   8-bit characters in gecos field
Message-ID:  <199612181348.FAA06937@freefall.freebsd.org>

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I've been entertaining the idea of having pw(8) allow 8-bit
characters in the passwd GECOS field. It was suggested earlier
that this might cause problems in email, but as far as I can
determine, sendmail handles this correctly by conversion to
quoted-printable. Other MIME mailers seem to do much the same
thing (ie. zmailer 2.99.x). Whether or not this is readable
on the receiving system depends of course on the character-set
header, but this becomes more an issue to do with user/system
configuration.

Are there any other areas of possible breakage that this could
cause? Some testing here suggests not, and I've already noticed
a few posts in the freeebsd mailing lists from people who are
using 8-bit in gecos (or overriding it via their user agent).
Please let me know if tehre are any objections.

The other issue this raises is how gecos entries with 8-bit
should be interpreted. I think this could be well covered by
using the user's login class via a lang= entry. I already have
a working login class implementation, and after some
associated changes elsewhere in the source tree, I hope to be
committing it to the -current branch.


Regards,

David Nugent - Unique Computing Pty Ltd - Melbourne, Australia
Voice +61-3-9791-9547  Data/BBS +61-3-9792-3507  3:632/348@fidonet
davidn@freefall.org davidn@blaze.net.au http://www.blaze.net.au/~davidn/



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