Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 13:48:33 +0930 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com> Cc: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Message format *again* (was: Why mplayer in FreeBSD 5.1 behave not so good as Debian in my computer?) Message-ID: <20030928041833.GC11520@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <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> <20030927053222.GC57218@dan.emsphone.com>
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--ALfTUftag+2gvp1h Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline On Saturday, 27 September 2003 at 0:32:22 -0500, Dan Nelson wrote: > 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. Hmm, interesting. I've added it to http://wwww.lemis.com/email/email-rfc.html. I suppose there are other places where I should refer to it as well. > 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. Yes, if the MUA (and the user) adhere to the conventions. I've taken a look at the messages I've received recently with format=flowed, and they're all < 80 characters long. That's the intention of the RFC, of course, but it happens so regularly that I wonder whether my MTA is reformatting. That doesn't appear to be right, though. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. If you don't, I may ignore the reply or reply to the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html See complete headers for address and phone numbers. NOTE: Due to the currently active Microsoft-based worms, I am limiting all incoming mail to 131,072 bytes. This is enough for normal mail, but not for large attachments. Please send these as URLs. --ALfTUftag+2gvp1h Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.0 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQE/dmEZIubykFB6QiMRAjhXAJ9NF1fP/+ImT1w8cZE6v+2WD7knGgCcDNF7 hCtB7TAub6SmXpOEhiaIBO8= =K/5u -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --ALfTUftag+2gvp1h--
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