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Message-ID: <004701c46597$e9040b80$4e6510ac@ds.tao.co.uk>
From: "William Blunn" <bill--cygwin AT tao-group DOT com>
To: <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
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Subject: Re: Wrapping long lines (Was Re: FAQ update suggestion for "I'm having basic problems with find. Why?")
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 10:34:01 +0100
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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.

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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