NOTE: 8-bit characters are treated - this radio group allows you to set the method used to handle 8-bit (non-ASCII) characters. If you are using only the English alphabet, this feature is not very significant to you because all English characters are ASCII characters and will go through the net without any problems. However, if you are using accented characters or character sets other than English, you should choose the method carefully because there still are some mail servers which do not allow appearance of 8-bit characters in e-mail messages. If you are not sure that such servers are functioning in the way you write your messages, it is better to choose either Base64 or Quoted-printable encoding. The difference between these two encoding methods is that Base64 produces totally unreadable text. Quoted-printable encoding still can be read if your alphabet is almost Latin, only accented characters are encoded. If your recipient's are using The Bat! or another program which can recognise Base64 and quoted-printable encoding automatically, you may choose either of these two methods.
Original material courtesy of Gerald E. Boyd.
Last modified:
May 24, 2007