Lately, a lot of people have been posting messages here that are malformatted, with long lines stretching out indefinitely. You can see this when you look at the web archive, where you sometimes have to scroll a mile to the right to see all of the message. This is contrary to the standards of RFC 2822, which recommend that there be a hard break after lines of no more than 79 characters.
More info: http://mailformat.dan.info/body/linelength.html
Info on configuring various mail programs to follow standards: http://mailformat.dan.info/config/
List archives online, where you can see the problem: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/
On 10/14/07, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
Lately, a lot of people have been posting messages here that are malformatted, with long lines stretching out indefinitely. You can see this when you look at the web archive, where you sometimes have to scroll a mile to the right to see all of the message. This is contrary to the standards of RFC 2822, which recommend that there be a hard break after lines of no more than 79 characters.
This is probably something in their mail client that they have no idea how to control. I know I don't. Maybe you count letters and add linebreaks but I think most of us just type a bunch of run-on sentences which wrap themselves without any difficulty.
So rather than indirectly hounding people who might not know who or what the hell you're talking about, would it be possible to tell the Pipermail or whatever to appropriately wrap messages when viewed in the archive directory?
—C.W.
On 15/10/2007, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
This is probably something in their mail client that they have no idea how to control. I know I don't. Maybe you count letters and add linebreaks but I think most of us just type a bunch of run-on sentences which wrap themselves without any difficulty. So rather than indirectly hounding people who might not know who or what the hell you're talking about, would it be possible to tell the Pipermail or whatever to appropriately wrap messages when viewed in the archive directory?
Spot-on, that's exactly where it should happen. Anyone want to hack on Mailman to do this?
- d.
On 10/15/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
This is probably something in their mail client that they have no idea how to control. I know I don't. Maybe you count letters and add linebreaks but I think most of us just type a bunch of run-on sentences which wrap themselves without any difficulty.
We all have heard of WYSIWYG, I use another acronym when it comes to mail/news clients, WYSIWIS, "What you see is what is sent". Most un*x type clients are WYSIWIS. Most of the early Windows clients such as Agent were "WYSISIS". The most popular Windows client, Outlook Express, is not. Even if you set it to wrap at 76 characters, what's in the editor is not what goes out.
It's even worse in many web forums where the line length seems to be based on the screen resolution of the poster. I've had cases where I posted to web forums from my brother's computer which has a large monitor and then have my own post run off the side of the screen when viewed on my small monitor. This was completely independent of the wrapping I saw in the edit box.
On 14/10/2007, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
Lately, a lot of people have been posting messages here that are malformatted, with long lines stretching out indefinitely. You can see this when you look at the web archive, where you sometimes have to scroll a mile to the right to see all of the message. This is contrary to the standards of RFC 2822, which recommend that there be a hard break after lines of no more than 79 characters.
That RFC is extremely outdated. There is no need for manual linebreaks these days - we have much wider monitors and functioning word wrap. The web archive just need to have "style="white-space: pre-wrap;"" added to the pre tag (it's CSS 2.1, so I'm not sure how many browsers support it - might need to use a few browser-specific methods).
On 10/15/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/10/2007, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
Lately, a lot of people have been posting messages here that are malformatted, with long lines stretching out indefinitely. You can see this when you look at the web archive, where you sometimes have to scroll a mile to the right to see all of the message. This is contrary to the standards of RFC 2822, which recommend that there be a hard break after lines of no more than 79 characters.
That RFC is extremely outdated. There is no need for manual linebreaks these days - we have much wider monitors and functioning word wrap. The web archive just need to have "style="white-space: pre-wrap;"" added to the pre tag (it's CSS 2.1, so I'm not sure how many browsers support it - might need to use a few browser-specific methods).
/me glares at [[List of RFCs]]
Somebody should write articles about more of these. The accompanying category is rather sparse.
—C.W.