email.message_from_file & quoted printable

[Skip Montanaro]

I have a bunch of old email archives I'm messing around with, for example,
rendering them on-demand in HTML. Some of the files use quoted printable
content transfer encoding. Here's one (with a number of headers elided):

>From classicrendezvous-admin  Mon Dec  4 15:29:22 2000
Message-ID: <027801bfcdaa$fa175230$268cbcd4 at stewart>
Reply-To: "Stewart Barrie" <sbarrie at bellefield.worldonline.co.uk>
From: "Stewart Barrie" <sbarrie at bellefield.worldonline.co.uk>
To: <Classicrendezvous at bikelist.org>
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 23:28:00 +0100
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-StripMime: Non-text section removed by stripmime
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/plain;charset="iso-8859-1"
Subject: {ClassicRend]Frame dent


Just inherited a nice 531 Claud Butler from the 60's I think. No =
eylelets and pencil stays. Unfortunately there is nice dent in the =
middle of the seat tube just above front mech clip height. Otherwise it = seems
fine.=20


Any thoughts on restoration? Are there any techniques for fixing dents =
in situ (I can hear the screams already) or are we definitely looking at =
a new seat tube? In which case, is it worth it?


Cheers



Stewart


--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
---


This message is stored in a file. I read it using email.message_from_file.
In the example above, the payload still retains the quoted printable bits.
Maybe it's not correctly encoded (no "=20" at the end of the second
paragraph, for example), but I would have thought the email package would
do what it could to decode things, but nope:

>>> print(msg.get_payload())
Just inherited a nice 531 Claud Butler from the 60's I think. No =
eylelets and pencil stays. Unfortunately there is nice dent in the =
middle of the seat tube just above front mech clip height. Otherwise it =
seems fine.=20


Any thoughts on restoration? Are there any techniques for fixing dents =
in situ (I can hear the screams already) or are we definitely looking at =
a new seat tube? In which case, is it worth it?


Cheers



Stewart


--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative

  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
---


Am I expecting too much from the email package when munching on crufty
20+yo archived email messages?

Thx,

Skip