Re: Folding of long lines in message bodies

On Sat May 28 2005 13:28, Jacob Palme wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> I remember that there has been discussion some years ago
> about folding of long lines in message bodies. The idea was
> that if there is a space immediately before a line break,
> this space indicates that this is a soft line break and
> should be unfolded on receipt.
> 
> What happended with these ideas? Did they ever become a
> standard, or a de-facto-standard?

I believe that you're referring to a content markup language known
as "format=flowed", which is described in RFC 3676.  There was a
long discussion on ietf-822 ca. February-August 2003, including
an attempt to define a syntax for that content markup language
(though I don't think there was ever a conclusion to that effort).

The format seems to be used and understood by only a few MUAs; it
causes quoted material, particularly with copy & paste, to be
formatted in extremely long lines in other MUAs. 

Also, as it employs (rather complicated, judging by the syntax
discussions) content markup, it seems inconsistent with the
intent of the text/plain media type (RFC 2046 section 3):

   The five discrete top-level media types are:

    (1)   text -- textual information.  The subtype "plain" in
          particular indicates plain text containing no
          formatting commands or directives of any sort. Plain
          text is intended to be displayed "as-is".

and section 4.1:

   Plain text does not provide for or allow
   formatting commands, font attribute specifications, processing
   instructions, interpretation directives, or content markup.