Re: [Zymail-devel] Great work! And, a new feature...

[Joe S. <jo...@in...>]

On Jan 2, 2008, at 12:22 PM, Tim Jones wrote:

> We all blamed the RS list mangler as the culprit when it appears that
> it was Mac Mail.

I don't believe this argument yet.  Please spell it out for me step  
by step.

>> But you have a point: we're not currently doing any line wrapping
>> when sending, and we probably should, at least for the plain-text
>> part (eventually we'll probably send both a plain-text part and an
>> HTML part for people who want to send styled email).  Wrapping to 72
>> characters is the standard.
>
> But, maybe we shouldn't wrap and let the client app wrap where
> needed.

For styled text, sure, but not for plain text.  Some (admittedly  
poorly-written but nonetheless common) MTAs will truncate or  
otherwise abuse lines longer than 76 characters.  Staying under 72  
characters is good practice for a MUA.  See RFC 1521 for example:  
<http://www.math-inf.uni-greifswald.de/~teumer/mime/1521/ 
Appendix_B.html>

(Mind the line wrap!)

>   With the mail that you sent from ZyMail, the lines were not
> wrapped, so it read much more reasonably on my screen.

What is "your screen"?  What client did you use to read it?

> On the other hand, this paragraph exceeds 72 characters and will be  
> wrapped when you receive it.

True, and Zymail too should be prepared to soft-wrap long lines.   
It's the standard practice of being a good citizen in a heterogenous  
environment: (1) follow all standards as well as you can; and (2) be  
prepared to deal with others who are not following the standards.

>>> Of course, this is sent from Mac Mail, so I expect your
>>> text to get butcher in the reply.
>>
>> No, looks fine to me.
>
> By butcher"ed", I meant that my response would have its lines wrapped
> while your original was unwrapped.

I didn't see that.  Both your response and my original looked the  
same to me.

Best,
- Joe

--
Joe Strout
Inspiring Applications, Inc.
http://www.InspiringApps.com