21 Jun
2004
21 Jun
'04
4:15 p.m.
Howdy all,
I was just wondering what you people think of witting messages in text
format = flowed to mailing lists - instead of the commonly used line
break at char 72 or wherever. I am conscious that basically a whitespace
at EOL is bad(TM), and the the evil OE aka Outlook Express will not
quote correctly when replying to a message written in flowed mode - but
still...
what is your opinion concerning text format flowed ? ;-)
Friendly,
Bob Hentges
--
http://bob.hentges.lu/
21 Jun
21 Jun
8:18 p.m.
begin Monday 21 June 2004 18:15, Bob Hentges quote:
Howdy all,
I was just wondering what you people think of witting messages in text
format = flowed to mailing lists - instead of the commonly used line
break at char 72 or wherever.
An overlong line by any other name is still an overlong line (if that
is what you mean by "text format flowed") ;-)
Accepted netiquette is indeed to keep line length under 80 characters
(or even 72, in order to leave room for quote characters, in case your
message is replied to). Most online netiquette guides seem to agree on
this:
http://www.use-net.ch/netiquette_engl.html#lines :
Limit Line Length and Avoid Control Characters
Try to keep your text in a generic format. Many (if not most) of the
people reading Usenet do so from 80 column terminals or from
workstations with 80 column terminal windows. Try to keep your lines
of text to less than 80 characters for optimal readability. If
people quote part of your article in a followup, short lines will
probably show up better, too.
http://www.eschkitai.de/openoffice/netikette.html#zeile :
12. Die Zeilenlänge beträgt höchstens 72 Zeichen
Begrenze die Zeilenlaenge im Text auf höchstens 72 Zeichen, noch
besser wären 68 Zeichen. So bleibt der Zeilenumbruch auch nach
mehrmaligem Quoting erhalten.
http://www.scibermentor.ca/mentor/netiquette_page_1_mentors.htm :
For lengthy messages, try to keep the length of lines in your email
below 70 characters; short lines are easier to read, especially on a
computer screen. Other people's terminals may not be able to display
more than 70 characters, so they may not be able to read the ends of
long lines.
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs312/2002sp/netiquette.htm :
Line lengths
Like your code, posts and email should not have excessively long
lines. This generally means 80 characters per line maximum. It is
annoying for the reader to have to scroll to read long lines.
Fortunately, most email clients make it intentionnally difficult to
violate this guideline. If ever you need longer lines for a good
reason (for instance, for quoting shell commands, or for extra-wide
ASCII drawings), you need to switch off this safety. In kmail, for
instance, you can do this by unchecking Options->Wordwrap . However,
as pointed out above, this should only be done in exceptional
circumstances.
I am conscious that basically a whitespace
at EOL is bad(TM), and the the evil OE aka Outlook Express will not
quote correctly when replying to a message written in flowed mode - but
still...
If the goal is to discourage people to use Outlook Express, there are
other methods than using long lines. One idea, for instance is to use
the word "begin" followed by two spaces at the start of a line ;-)
what is your opinion concerning text format flowed ?
;-)
Friendly,
Bob Hentges
Regards,
Alain
8:45 p.m.
Alain Knaff wrote:
My intention is not to discourage people to use Outlook Express, I am
just explaining that people using Outlook Express will have problems
when replying to messages written in "flowed mode". :)
Friendly,
Bob Hentges
--
http://bob.hentges.lu/
begin Monday 21 June 2004 18:15, Bob Hentges quote:
Yes, and that is exactly where flowed text messages come in handy.
Actually I am using text format flowed right at the moment. And IMO it
has numerous advantages. Look, if you are using a client who doesn't
understand "flowed" the mail will be displayed just normally. That means
the line break after the 72nd char will be used. But, if a client knows
how to "work" with flowed, it will display the text in a normal way,
which means, without a line break after the 72nd char.
So far, the only real disadvantage I see is that there is a whitespace
before every end of line. But isn't that an acceptable "problem" if
mails can be read a whole lot easier.
Howdy all,
I was just wondering what you people think of witting messages in text
format = flowed to mailing lists - instead of the commonly used line
break at char 72 or wherever.
An overlong line by any other name is still an overlong line (if that
is what you mean by "text format flowed") ;-)
Accepted netiquette is indeed to keep line length under 80 characters
(or even 72, in order to leave room for quote characters, in case your
message is replied to). Most online netiquette guides seem to agree on
this:
<snip> I am conscious
that basically a whitespace
at EOL is bad(TM), and the the evil OE aka Outlook Express will not
quote correctly when replying to a message written in flowed mode - but
still...
If the goal is to discourage people to use Outlook Express, there are
other methods than using long lines. One idea, for instance is to use
the word "begin" followed by two spaces at the start of a line ;-) 
22 Jun
22 Jun
9:26 a.m.
Alain Knaff wrote:
If the goal is to discourage people to use Outlook Express, there are
other methods than using long lines. One idea, for instance is to use
the word "begin" followed by two spaces at the start of a line ;-)
I'm curious about that "begin"-story can you tell me about that? I
also
wondered what will happen to a line with only a "." in it. What do the
MUAs do to these? I never tested this so here is my test:
.
if you can read this Mozilla does it right.
BTW. can somebody tell me how I can switch off the html-Format default
sending in Mozilla 1.3.1 ? I believe it does so only fr recipients which
are listed not to support html.
10:19 a.m.
BTW. can somebody tell me how I can switch off the
html-Format default
sending in Mozilla 1.3.1 ? I believe it does so only fr recipients which
are listed not to support html.
You can even disable HTML composition by having a plain text only Mail
Composer:
Go to:
Edit -> Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings -> Composition & Addressing
and remove check from:
Compose messages in HTML format
or you can have Mozilla ask you every time what you want:
Edit -> Preferences -> Mail & Newsgroups -> Send Format
This works with Mozilla 1.7. If I remember correctly, this was already
possible with the earlier versions of Mozilla.
Btw: Update your Mozilla. Moz 1.7 is 20% faster!
Patrick Kaell
10:52 a.m.
begin Tuesday 22 June 2004 11:26, Jay Christnach quote:
Alain Knaff wrote:
If a line starts with "begin ", Outlook believes that the rest of the
mail is an uuencoded File, and just shows an (empty) attachment
instead of the rest of the mail. Particularly funny for digested
mailing lists...
If the goal is to discourage people to use Outlook
Express, there are
other methods than using long lines. One idea, for instance is to use
the word "begin" followed by two spaces at the start of a line ;-)
I'm curious about that "begin"-story can you tell me about that? I also
wondered what will happen to a line with only a "." in it. What do the
MUAs do to these? I never tested this so here is my test:
Yes, some older versions of Outlook had problems with "." as well.
When downloading the mail via POP (and possibly also IMAP), a dot
alone on a line acts as the end-of-message character. Thus, if the
text of the mail already contains lines starting with a dot, these are
doubled, in order to escape them.
However, if such a double-dot sequence falls on a packet boundary
(first dot in previous packet, and second in next), Outlook becomes
confused as well. In that case, Outlook thinks that the message is
over (because it interprets the single dot at the end of previous
packet as an end of message indicator), and becomes hopelessly
confused. The entire mailbox becomes unusable to Outlook, until the
offending message is removed (which can only be done using a
different, non-broken email reader, or on the server, by the
sysadmin).
Of course, that problem is a little bit harder to exploit, as the mail
sender cannot know the packet size (MTU) used between the POP server
and Outlook. The trick is to append a huge quantity of single dots
(>3000) to the end of the mail, hoping that one of them falls on a
packet bounday (Example, see below...). Anyhow, all of this is
hearsay, I've never seen the "."-bug in action.
end
.
if you can read this Mozilla does it right.
Yes, Mozilla (and newer versions of Outlook too, unfortunately)
handles this correctly.
Alain
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7550
days inactive
7551
days old
5 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
Alain Knaff -
Alain Knaff -
Bob Hentges -
Jay Christnach -
Patrick Kaell