Thus spake Dan Frakes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, circa 12/7/2002 9:08 PM:
> RFC 2821 is (in practice) superseded
> by RFC 2822, which states that although 998 characters is the de jure
> "maximum" line length, 78 characters is the de facto maximum line length

2821 and 2822 cover different, though related, things. 2822 obsoletes 822,
nor 2821. Your citation was interesting, though. I wonder if that is what
the Entourage team based their unalterable text wrap setting on? If so, they
should probably read the definition of "should" in RFC2119. Also, it they
finish reading RFC2822, they'll find the following:

   The more conservative 78 character recommendation is to accommodate
   the many implementations of user interfaces that display these
   messages which may truncate, or disastrously wrap, the display of
   more than 78 characters per line, in spite of the fact that such
   implementations are non-conformant to the intent of this
   specification (and that of [RFC2821] if they actually cause
   information to be lost). Again, even though this limitation is put on
   messages, it is encumbant upon implementations which display messages
   to handle an arbitrarily large number of characters in a line
   (certainly at least up to the 998 character limit) for the sake of
   robustness.

So, in a way, everyone's right. There's nothing in the RFC to prevent
Entourage from allowing me my 110 character line if I want it, but if they
wanted, the team can point to the section you quoted, "Each line [...]
SHOULD be no more than 78 characters." It's the difference between de jure
and de facto you pointed out.


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