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From: "William Blunn" <bill--cygwin@tao-group.com>
To: <cygwin@cygwin.com>
References: <010701c464f4$398e2030$4e6510ac@ds.tao.co.uk> <Pine.GSO.4.58.0407081027371.11665@slinky.cs.nyu.edu> <013301c464fe$e2e425d0$4e6510ac@ds.tao.co.uk> <Pine.GSO.4.58.0407081124080.11665@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: Wrapping long lines (Was Re: FAQ update suggestion for "I'm having basic problems with find. Why?")
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 11:27:55 +0100
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> This seems like a reasonable discussion that can hopefully resolve this
> issue once and for all, and so, IMO, belongs on the list rather than in
> private e-mail.

There is a phrase that goes:
 
  "Be permissive in what you accept, and strict in what you send"
  
Now this is just a phrase, and by itself does not have significance.

However it is well understood to be a concise summary of a set of ideas
which are generally accepted to be sound.

If you are developing a system which implements a web-accessible mail
archive where the archive contains messages from many disparate sources,
then I would have thought that this would be one guideline you should be
paying attention to.

It is trivially simple to handle flowed-text messages as well as
messages with additional inexplicable linebreaks.

I have set up several web-based systems which do this, and it wasn't
hard.

It hasn't caused any problems on the systems I set up, and has made
things a lot easier by not having to waste time trying to browbeat users
into doing things in a particular way.

Bill
-- 
William Blunn <bill at tao-group dot com>
Tao, 62/63 Suttons Business Park, Earley, Reading, RG6 1AZ, UK
Tel: +44 845 644 4458, Fax: +44 845 644 4459, Web: http://tao-group.com/

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