From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Sep 26 22:32:24 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4E58016A4B3; Fri, 26 Sep 2003 22:32:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 75F6143FF7; Fri, 26 Sep 2003 22:32:23 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) id h8R5WMnG084442; Sat, 27 Sep 2003 00:32:22 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan) Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 00:32:22 -0500 From: Dan Nelson To: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" Message-ID: <20030927053222.GC57218@dan.emsphone.com> References: <20030926080458.8D277349379@sjtu.edu.cn> <20030926114849.GA70496@rot13.obsecurity.org> <20030926192638.GJ9910@localhost.Earthlink.net> <20030927021722.GF16008@wantadilla.lemis.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030927021722.GF16008@wantadilla.lemis.com> X-OS: FreeBSD 5.1-CURRENT X-message-flag: Outlook Error User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i cc: freebsd-questions Subject: Re: Message format *again* (was: Why mplayer in FreeBSD 5.1 behave not so good as Debian in my computer?) X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 05:32:24 -0000 In the last episode (Sep 27), Greg 'groggy' Lehey said: > [Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] > On Friday, 26 September 2003 at 14:26:38 -0500, Eugene Lee wrote: > > On Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 04:48:49AM -0700, Kris Kennaway wrote: > >> > >> 1) Please wrap your lines at 70 characters so your emails may be > >> easily read > > > > Just curious, is "format=flowed" disallowed here? > > I don't see anything in the standards that defines this format, so I > suppose the answer should be "yes". On a more practical basis, I > don't know of any UNIX-based MUA which treats this correctly, and > none of the messages I looked at it had this attribute. In addition, > I can't see how "format=flowed" can distinguish between computer > output (which should be quoted unchanged, possibly with very long > lines) and text, which RFC 2822 recommends to be 78 characters or > less. It also makes it almost impossible to quote. > > So yes, it's "disallowed" in the sense that it's discouraged, and > that a number of people, myself included, tend to delete such > messages unread. Follow the URL below for more details. RFC2646 defines format=flowed, and does a pretty good job of explaining the wrapping, joining, and quoting rules. The nice thing about correctly-generated format=flowed text is that it looks just like regular text, so a MUA that doesn't understand flowed text can still display perfectly readable output. Paragraphs are wrapped at 72 chars, and a trailing space is added at the wrap point as a hint that the next line is a logical continuation. Lines not ending in a space are not flowed, so it's easy to specify what text will be flowed and what won't. I'd use it myself if I can ever get around to hacking joe's paragraph-reformat function to add the trailing spaces.. -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com