On Fri, Jul 09, 2004 at 10:34:01AM +0100, William Blunn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Brian Dessent wrote: > > RFC2822 (which obsoletes the old RFC822) states in section 2.2.1: > > > > There are two limits that this standard places on the number of > > characters in a line. Each line of characters MUST be no more than 998 > > characters, and SHOULD be no more than 78 characters, excluding the > > CRLF. > > I am not sure this argument argues the point you think it does. > > "Each line of characters MUST be no more than 998 characters, and SHOULD > be no more than 78 characters, excluding the CRLF." > > I believe that at this point they are talking about the byte stream that > represents the encoded form of the message. > > If you are using quoted-printable encoding, then all encoded lines will > be 78 characters or less, and so will be fitting in with the "SHOULD" > specification, i.e. the most conformant. > > However, the original form of the message (what the composer sees, and > what the reader should see) can have an arbitrarily large number of > characters between newline characters (or between a newline and the > start or end of the message). > > So, if you are using quoted-printable, you can cheerfully do paragraphs > as long as you like, delimited by newline characters, and still be > perfectly within the RFCs. > > > Wrapping lines at less than 80 characters is the standard accepted way > > of sending text email. > > It may be the "standard Accepted way", but you haven't actually given > any reasons or pointers to reasons. > > One could say that you are not actually arguing your case, you're just > saying "that's the way it is, so it must be right". > > > It's the least common denominator that's guaranteed to work everywhere. > > I disgree. > > For example (and this point has already been made) it does not work well > on my PDA which cannot display 80 characters across the width of the > display. > > When I read a message which has the additional unnecessary linebreaks, I > get a somewhat jerky reading because every third line is prematurely cut > off. > > If the message had been formatted into paragraphs, I would just see the > paragraphs as the author originally wrote them. > > And what problems would there be with that flowed message in other > environments? > > Every mail reader I have ever seen wraps lines. > > Every web browser I have ever seen wraps lines. The only problem here > is that most archiving software rather unhelpfully mandates that the > browser must not wrap at the right edge of the viewer's window. > > Even a dumb mail reader, which does not even decode the quoted-printable > will see lines of 76 or so characters with an "=" sign at the end of > each line. > > > It's just like HTML email - can I read it? Yes. Do I want it in my > > inbox? Heck no. > > I don't think this is valid. > > If I sent you a format-flowed message, chances are your mail reader > would wrap the lines and you wouldn't even know. > > > Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. > > Agreed. > > But conversely, just because something has always been done in a > particular way, doesn't mean that it should never be reviewed. > > If there are logical reasons for changing, for example getting a better > match to the conditions of a changed world, without creating backwards- > compatibility problems, then change should be considered.
I want to know how you would format a post like yours above using flowed format. I honestly can't think of any way to intersperse quotes and replies that way without picking a reasonably small width and putting newlines in. -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
