Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 14:28:45 -0400 From: Bart Silverstrim <bsilver@chrononomicon.com> To: Danny MacMillan <flowers@users.sourceforge.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [Solved] How to disable > quoting of lines starting with From in email body? Message-ID: <366c9fa64160b1789cdef8a524864036@chrononomicon.com> In-Reply-To: <20050614181719.GC510@aldebaran.local> References: <20050613043910.GA55308@aldebaran.local> <20050614181719.GC510@aldebaran.local>
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On Jun 14, 2005, at 2:17 PM, Danny MacMillan wrote: > On Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 10:39:10PM -0600, Danny MacMillan wrote: >> Hello, >> >> Every time I read an email that has a line in the message body that >> starts with the word "From", the line is quoted with a > character. >> >> It is my understanding that this is done necessarily when email is >> stored in the mbox format to distinguish lines that start new email >> messages from lines that are just part of the message body and just >> Happen to start with "From". However, I am not using the mbox >> message format. >> >> I am using qmail with Maildir delivery as my MTA. I read my email >> using mutt to connect to a dovecot IMAP server, all built from >> ports on a FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE machine. >> >> I know this isn't a FreeBSD question per se, but I can't identify >> the piece of software that is either a) inserting the > when it >> shouldn't or b) not removing the > when it should. I have done >> my best to search the net for the answer but when the most >> significant search term is the word "From" and the second most >> significant is the > character ... well, let's just say I was >> not successful and leave it at that. I vaguely remember reading >> something about it a long time ago before I myself was plagued >> with the problem but I can't for the life of me remember where. > > It turns out that when I send the same email both to freebsd-test@ > and directly to the account I have subscribed to that list, the > mail delivered via the list has the From line quoting and the other > one doesn't. So it looks like the list is actually sending the > From lines quoted over the wire and my FreeBSD configuration is > okay. Most of the mail I read on this box is list traffic so > I didn't notice. On this list? I forget what it's called now, but qualcomm had a method of quoting messages so that email would be indented properly on very small displays, and it's a format that Mail.app uses in quoting things...and I don't have the ">", but rather colored lines showing indenting, so from what I can tell there's a formatting code being put into the message to assist with proper word wrapping and the MUA is responsible for properly interpreting the text. Perhaps it's a combination of factors; I remember some mail agents give you an option of how to prefix quoted messages (the >, custom characters, etc.). Only other thing I could suggest would be a sniff dump of the messages flying over the wire then retracing them to find out exactly what's happening, or see if your MUA stores messages in a plain format that can be viewed on the console and see what exactly is in them (or use a hex editor on the source to see if there are non-visible characters embedded in the text for formatting purposes).
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