365015 - Wrong Content-Transfer-Encoding when forwarding tag: RSS messages as attachments to email recipient

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(MailNews Core :: Feed Reader, defect)

Description

[Ben]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1
Build Identifier: 2 beta 1

RSS messages from MozillaZine that are forwarded as attachment to an email recipient are converted to base64 encoding, while one of the Content-Transfer-Encoding: headers says that it is 8bit.

So far I found that only RSS messages that have the "<tag:"-type Message-Id are affected. Messages that have the "<http:"-type Message-Id are not affected. It could be that this is not what distinguishes them, but on the RSS feeds that I am subscribed to, this appears to be the difference.

See bug 258278 for more information. That bug describes that RSS messages are
recognized by a Message-Id that starts with either "http:" or "https:", even if
they have been moved to a regular email folder.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Subscribe to a MozillaZine RSS feed with summary only.
2. Verify that its RSS messages have a Message-Id that starts with "<tag:". You can do that by hitting ctrl+u.
3. Select one or more of these RSS messages and choose Forward as Attachment.
4. Send the email message to yourself.

Actual Results:  
The RSS attachments are displayed in base64, which is not decoded:

-----
Subject: Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.9 and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 Released
From: <mozillaZine.org>
Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 23:29:23 GMT

CjxodG1sPg0KICA8aGVhZD4NCiAgICA8dGl0bGU+TW96aWxsYSBGaXJlZm94IDEuNS4wLjkg YW5kIE1vemlsbGEgVGh1bmRlcmJpcmQgMS41LjAuOSBSZWxlYXNlZDwvdGl0bGU+DQogICAg PGJhc2UgaHJlZj0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy5tb3ppbGxhemluZS5vcmcvdGFsa2JhY2suaHRtbD9h cnRpY2xlPTIwMjM3Ij4NCiAgICA8c3R5bGUgdHlwZT0idGV4dC9jc3MiPg0KICAgICAgDQoK ICAgIDwvc3R5bGU+DQogIDwvaGVhZD4NCiAgPGJvZHk+DQogICAgDQogICAgICANCiAgICAg
[...]

Expected Results:  
The attachment should either be decoded correctly or not be encoded in base64.

Hitting ctrl+u shows the following source code for the attachment:

--------------080409060909020306040207
Content-Type: message/rfc822;
 name*0="Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.9 and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 Released";
 name*1=".eml"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: inline;
 filename*0="Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.9 and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 Rele";
 filename*1="ased.eml"

X-Mozilla-Keys:                                                                                
Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 23:29:23 GMT
Message-Id: <tag:mozillazine.org,2004:[e-mail]>
From: <mozillaZine.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.9 and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 Released
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Base: http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=20237
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

CjxodG1sPg0KICA8aGVhZD4NCiAgICA8dGl0bGU+TW96aWxsYSBGaXJlZm94IDEuNS4wLjkg
YW5kIE1vemlsbGEgVGh1bmRlcmJpcmQgMS41LjAuOSBSZWxlYXNlZDwvdGl0bGU+DQogICAg
PGJhc2UgaHJlZj0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy5tb3ppbGxhemluZS5vcmcvdGFsa2JhY2suaHRtbD9h
cnRpY2xlPTIwMjM3Ij4NCiAgICA8c3R5bGUgdHlwZT0idGV4dC9jc3MiPg0KICAgICAgDQoK
ICAgIDwvc3R5bGU+DQogIDwvaGVhZD4NCiAgPGJvZHk+DQogICAgDQogICAgICANCiAgICAg
[...]

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

This is in part a dupe of bug 326303 (headers of forwarded message not properly encoded when attachment is base64-encoded) and in part a dupe of bug 361788 (certain RSS items are forwarded as attachments instead of links).

Also related to bug 248639, I think.  Except for the RSS-specific aspect, this is all part of the MIME miasma.

Comment 2

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

Reporter, does the issue still occur in the latest supported 2.0.0.x / Shredder trunk nightlies?

(1.5.0.x is end-of-life and the latest supported 2.0.0.x is 2.0.0.17)

Comment 3

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

RESO INCO per lack of response to last question. If you feel this change was made in error, please respond to this bug with your reasons why.