Re: emacs-25 b6b47AF: Properly encode/decode base64Binary data in SOAP

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 19:58:21 +0800
> From: Alex Harsanyi <address@hidden>
> Cc: Andreas Schwab <address@hidden>, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden>, 
>       Thomas Fitzsimmons <address@hidden>, address@hidden, address@hidden
> 
> The decoding in soap-client is consistent, even though not in the way
> you would like it :-)
> 
>   * if it is told that a value is a string, it will return a string,
>   * if it is told that a value is a byte array it will return a byte
> array (unibyte string)

Told by whom?  By debbugs.el, by the WSDL, by the debbugs server, by
something else?  (Sorry, I know almost nothing about the debbugs or
SOAP.)

> I think the problem here is that the debbugs server encodes utf8
> values as base64, even though the message envelope is utf8 XML and
> could handle them as normal strings.   debbugs.el does not want to
> know about this, so expects strings to be strings.  soap-client.el is
> caught in the middle.

Which ones of the involved parties know, or can know, that the
originator is a string?

> I would also like to reiterate that base64 encoding can be used for
> other things, such as images, and it would not be appropriate to
> decode those as utf8

It should be easy to detect truly binary byte streams: e.g., look for
null bytes.

> (not to mention that such a decoding might fail).

It cannot fail in Emacs, AFAIK.