NAME

       qprint - encode / decode file as RFC 1521 MIME Quoted-Printable

SYNOPSIS

       qprint -d|-e [ options ] [ infile [ outfile ] ]

DESCRIPTION

       The  MIME  (Multipurpose  Internet Mail Extensions) specification RFC 1521 and successors)
       defines a mechanism for encoding text consisting primarily of printable ASCII  characters,
       but  which  may  contain characters (for example, accented letters in the ISO 8859 Latin-1
       character set) which cannot be encoded as 7-bit  ASCII  or  are  non-printable  characters
       which may confuse mail transfer agents.

       qprint  is  a command line utility which encodes and decodes files in this format.  It can
       be used within a pipeline as an encoding or decoding filter, and is most commonly used  in
       this  manner  as  part  of an automated mail processing system.  With appropriate options,
       qprint can encode pure binary files, but it's a poor choice since it may inflate the  size
       of  the file by as much as a factor of three.  The Base64 MIME encoding is a better choice
       for such data.

OPTIONS

       -b, --binary
                   Treat the input (when encoding) or output (when decoding) file as pure binary,
                   and  process  end  of  line sequences as binary data.  Encoding and decoding a
                   file with this option preserves the exact sequence of bytes in the input,  but
                   does  not  perform the translation of end of line sequences normally performed
                   by Quoted-Printable encoding.

       --copyright Print program copyright information.

       -d, --decode
                   Decodes the input, previously created by qprint, to recover the original input
                   file.

       -e, --encode
                   Encodes the input into an output text file containing its qprint encoding.

       -i, --ebcdic
                   Encode ASCII characters for which no equivalent exists in the EBCDIC character
                   set.  This renders files more portable when transported to EBCDIC systems.

       -n, --noerrcheck
                   Suppress error checking when decoding.  By default, upon  encountering  a  non
                   white  space character which does not belong to the qprint set, or discovering
                   the input file is incorrectly padded to a multiple of four characters,  qprint
                   issues  an error message and terminates processing with exit status 1.  The -n
                   option suppresses even this rudimentary error checking; invalid characters are
                   silently  ignored  and  the output truncated to the last three valid octets if
                   the input is incorrectly padded.

       -p ,--paranoid
                   Every character in the input file will be encoded as an escape sequence.   You
                   must  also specify the -b or --binary option if you wish end of line sequences
                   to be escaped as well.  This option is a last resort when there's no other way
                   to transmit the file, but an encoding explicitly designed for binary data such
                   as Base64 is a much more economical choice.

       -u, --help  Print how-to-call information.

       --version   Print program version information.

EXIT STATUS

       qprint returns status 0 if processing was completed without errors,  1  if  an  I/O  error
       occurred  or  errors  were  detected  in decoding a file which indicate it is incorrect or
       incomplete, and 2 if processing could not be performed at  all  due,  for  example,  to  a
       nonexistent input file.

FILES

       If  no  infile is specified or infile is a single ``-'', qprint reads from standard input;
       if no outfile is given, or outfile is a single ``-'', output is sent to  standard  output.
       The  input  and output are processed strictly serially; consequently qprint may be used in
       pipelines.  The program can process files of any size supported by the  system  containing
       text lines of arbitrary length.

BUGS

       Encoding  a file with a large percentage of non-ASCII characters may dramatically increase
       its size.  This is inherent in the design of Quoted-Printable encoding.

       Please report bugs and documentation errors to bugs@fourmilab.ch.

SEE ALSO

       base64(1), uuencode(1), RFC1521

AUTHOR

            John Walker
            http://www.fourmilab.ch/

       This software is in the public domain.  Permission to use, copy,  modify,  and  distribute
       this  software  and  its  documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted,
       without any conditions or restrictions.  This  software  is  provided  ``as  is''  without
       express or implied warranty.

       This is version 1.0 of qprint.  The current version of this program may be downloaded from
       http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/qprint.