Another New Feature Request

[Paul Hodges]

On Mon, 08 Nov 1999 17:51:53 -0800 (PST), Bill Wood wrote:

>  I am at a total loss as to why this line length
>  limitation, as implemented, is desireable or sensible.

It may not now be either.  However, it exists, and is built into the
most basic level of many SMTP servers and mail clients.  As a result,
any client which is written to ignore it (e.g. Outlook) will send
messages that have a substantial chance of arriving at their
destinations corrupted, or of being displayed corruptly by clients
which cannot handle them.

Even if it is decided to change this (and there is no sign of that),
there would be many years before the change could be relied on
throughout the Internet.  And there already /is/ a mechanism defined
for handling MS-style long-line "paragraphs" - the MIME attachment.

Paul Hodges
QBS Software Ltd