Re: Folding of long lines in message bodies

> On Mon June 6 2005 16:53, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote:
> > Bruce Lilly writes:
> > > The distinguishing characteristic of such messages (absent from
> > > Jacob's original in this thread) is that an entire paragraph of text
> > > is contained in a single message line as described in section 3.1 of
> > > RFC 3676.
> >
> > Agreed. So in other words, nothing about this problem is related to
> > RFC3676. ISTR that Netscape Navigator 2.0 did the same thing with
> > text/plain.

> "this problem" == extremely long lines == RFC 3676 section 3.1 "use
> CRLF to represent paragraph breaks [...] Text which meets this
> description is defined by this memo as "flowed" [...] software products
> erroneously label this format as Text/Plain, resulting in much user
> discomfort"

> Unfortunately, 3676 and its predecessor label the format as text/plain.

You appear to have missed section 4.2, which says:

  When generating Format=Flowed text, lines SHOULD be 78 characters or shorter,
  including any trailing white space and also including any space added as part
  of stuffing (see Section 4.4). As suggested values, any paragraph longer than
  78 characters in total length could be wrapped using lines of 72 or fewer
  characters. While the specific line length used is a matter of aesthetics and
  preference, longer lines are more likely to require rewrapping and to encounter
  difficulties with older mailers. (It has been suggested that 66 character lines
  are the most readable.)

Far from giving text generators carte blanche to generate long lines in hopes
they'll be wrapped by the receiver, RFC 3676 reiterates and even strengthens
the recommendation (it cannot be a requirement since there are cases where long
lines are unavoidable) that text/plain material use short lines.

What RFC 3676 does is enhance the ability to display plain text on displays of
varying sizes. And none of these benefits would accrue if a different media
type had been used.

I have not observed obuse of RFC 3676 formats in practice - almost all material
I received with format=flowed displays fine in an 80 column display. But sadly,
there are still plenty of botched clients (including some new ones) that
generate long lines in classic text/plain. RFC 3676 really wasn't aimed at
solving this problem, but in retrospect I wish it had tried...

				Ned