http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3676.html
A bit of a revelation.
format=flowed wasn't what I thought it might be, but it turned out to be much better.
It doesn't look that complicated but it's actually a brilliant piece of e-mail engineering.
format=flowed would appear to solve all the issues mentioned in the thread earlier this year.
Messages using format=flowed will look just like like 80-column mail to all the old curmudgeons.
However when viewed in a reader which understands format=flowed, paragraphs will be re-flowed to the width of the reader's window.
Message quoting, using ">" is handled beautifully, with even quoted messages being able to be perfectly re-flowed to the reader's window size.
And the best part:
The Cygwin mailing list web archiving system already supports it.
Any message using format=flowed will be emitted beautifully by the web archiving system, resulting in lovely flowed paragraphs, including quoted messages which will be flowed and presented with quote-bars.
For an example of how format=flowed works with a quoted message, look at one of Andrew DeFaria's messages:
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2004-07/msg00266.html
Andrew appears to have been using Thunderbird 0.7.2.
I was using Microsoft Outlook Express, which does not support format=flowed.
I am now using Thunderbird 1.0, which does support format=flowed.
So *this* message should come out nicely for everyone, both in e-mail and in the archive, *and* with no extra effort required on my part.
Marvellous!
Bill -- William Blunn <bill at tao-group.com> Tao, 62/63 Suttons Business Park, Earley, Reading, RG6 1AZ, UK Tel: +44 845 644 4458, Fax: +44 845 644 4459, Web: http://tao-group.com/
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