rosenblatt, joseph


> Dear List,
> Due to a number of reasons I do not  subscribe to the list but read it on
> RAVEN.UTC.EDU. Some of the postings format into long lines instead of
using
> normal paragraph style line breaks. I have noticed that certain poster's
> posting have this happen all the time. Without meaning any offense in any
> way, shape or form Dave Darnell's posts are always like that, though it
> happens with others as well. Is this an email problem on his part, a
problem
> in the way web server receives his email or not a problem at all except in
> the eye of the beholder?

Dave Darnell posts mail from a system which uses the ISO X.400 format,
whereas most people uses the IETF formats.  I don't know if line/paragraph
breaks are specified in the X.400 standard, but in RFC1494 there isn't any
guidance on how to convert breaks.

The software on Raven formats the text with the <pre> tag, which keeps the
line breaks as they are in the text message.  Perhaps there is an option in
the software to do it differently?  Offhand, looking at the LISTSERV
manuals, I don't see it.


The IETF standards don't actually give much guidance about line breaks at
all.  It is a convention that people break lines into <80 character chunks
with CR-LF, but that isn't required by the standards at all.  They do limit
lines to 998 characters, but that only has to do with data transfer, not how
they message is displayed.  There is also a requirement, when using the MIME
quoted-printable content-transfer-encoding, to limit lines to 76 characters,
but that again only has to do with data transfer, not display.

The standards don't really say anything about how plain text is supposed to
be displayed except for a sensible proposal from Qualcomm, the makers of
Eudora; RFC2646 specifies an easy way to make mail messages that can
distinguish between hard and soft line breaks.  I don't know of any mail
program except for Eudora which currently supports it, though.

References:
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1494.txt
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2045.txt
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2646.txt
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt

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