From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Dec 18 05:48:42 1996 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id FAA06943 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 18 Dec 1996 05:48:42 -0800 (PST) Received: (from davidn@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id FAA06937 for freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org; Wed, 18 Dec 1996 05:48:41 -0800 (PST) From: David Nugent Message-Id: <199612181348.FAA06937@freefall.freebsd.org> Subject: 8-bit characters in gecos field To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 00:48:41 +1100 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk 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/