Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
One more thought... it would be nicer if there was a more default-using, perhaps like whatnow's attach, #attach /tmp/foo.pdf It should perhaps allow the [description] syntax. One thing I currently find a pain on occasion is the lack of `undo'. One silently `mime's at the whatnow prompt, then `edit's to see what it's made of things, realises a change that's required, either to a directive or text, and is stuck without an `unmime'. How about if `mime' optionally created a new draft and switched to editing that, assuming one has a draft folder, is it the default yet?, and a succesful `send' deletes a bunch of drafts at the end, number-of-mimes + 1. If I want an undo then I `quit', which leaves all drafts behind, and `comp -use' from the draft where all was last well. Cheers, Ralph. ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
Ken == Ken Hornstein k...@pobox.com writes: Ken Now what I've seen is many times email clients will used Ken quoted-printable Ken encoding and send paragraphs as one line, but they'll still Ken break at 76 The conclusion I came two after a discussion on i...@ietf.org wasn't that these mail clients are failing to mark things as format=flowed, but rather that they are essentially not implementing text/plain at all, rather they are just faking it from text/html. Most egeviously, Apple is now bug compatible. I'd like ietf.org to enforce the 77 column limit on email, and see what happens. Ken I will note that exmh seems to automatically reflow all long lines so Ken that seems like a reasonable default behavior. I'd like to write a document and declare that the standard. -- ] He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life! | firewalls [ ] Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON|net architect[ ] m...@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[ Kyoto Plus: watch the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzx1ycLXQSE then sign the petition. ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
Hi Oliver, Sounds like you need Jerry Peek's original script: http://rand-mh.sourceforge.net/book/examples/mh/bin/original or http://oreilly.com/openbook/mh/s-origin.htm Thanks! Seeing they just do a simple rename from ,42.orig back to 42 is enough. I can do that manually rather than need the script. It is documented, I probably knew but forgot. Otherwise if the file argument to mhbuild is the name of a valid composition file, and the translation is successful, mhbuild will replace the original file with the new MIME message. It will rename the original file to start with the “,” character and end with the string “.orig”, e.g., if you are editing the file “draft”, it will be renamed to “,draft.orig”. This allows you to easily recover the mhbuild input file. Cheers, Ralph. ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
Hi Norm, That's disconcerting. For more than a decade now, the default for my editor was for no line wrapping. I inserted new lines to generate my own formatting. But some recipients complained that my Emails are jagged. This was caused by their Email client inserting its own line endings. Are you sure that's the cause? You inserted new lines how? With fmt(1) or similar, or manually? If you're using a fixed-width font and they're reading it proportionally then two lines of 72 characters may look different lengths to them. Add on any variance because you're splitting lines and not fmt(1) or vim, e.g. gqap, and that may be jagged. So I gave up trying to control the format in which recipients see my Email. Just last week, I wrote the code to make line wrapping be the default whenever I'm editing a file in my drafts folder whose name is all digits. By that you mean each paragraph is one long line logically but the editor breaks it at a decent point, e.g. end of word, to make it easier to view? If so, you need to be careful of the 998 limit that Ken's pointed out; sendmail for one, IIRC, is an MTA that will break over-long lines, inserting a `!' at the end of each line that continued originally. So... do I conform to standards or make my my recipients unhappy? In passing I note that almost all the Email I get, not from nmh-workers@nongnu.org, has very long lines. I send text/plain with lines no longer than 72 and blank lines between paragraphs. I've not had complaints of jaggedness but it certainly wouldn't adjust to fit the width of the recipient's window. The long-lined emails you're receiving may say in the MIME-headers that the text is to be `flowed', i.e. re-formatted to fit the viewer's display; I'm not sure which part of nmh can handle that, mhl through mhshow? Cheers, Ralph. ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
I send text/plain with lines no longer than 72 and blank lines between paragraphs. I've not had complaints of jaggedness but it certainly wouldn't adjust to fit the width of the recipient's window. The long-lined emails you're receiving may say in the MIME-headers that the text is to be `flowed', i.e. re-formatted to fit the viewer's display; I'm not sure which part of nmh can handle that, mhl through mhshow? So, let me speak a bit on that. The canonical standard here is RFC 3676. That explains how to deal with format=flowed. According to that standard EVEN WITH format=flowed you're supposed to send 78 columns (the whole point is that older email clients, e.g. nmh :-), will be able to display them without issues). Now what I've seen is many times email clients will used quoted-printable encoding and send paragraphs as one line, but they'll still break at 76 columns using the = at the end of the line (which means do a soft line break). So it's a long line but it's not that way on the wire. I think in practice quoted-printable means you're doing reflowing. I will note that exmh seems to automatically reflow all long lines so that seems like a reasonable default behavior. Now, who's RESPONSIBLE for handling that in nmh? Well, good question. Most of the formatting smarts is in mhl. Looking at the mhl man page shows a bunch of quaint options that seem appropriate for people on ADM3A terminals, like bell or uppercase. So mhl is kinda behind the times. Also, all it knows about is components, and specifically a body component. mhshow is slightly better it shows the headers first (with mhl) then it handles each part seperately. It doesn't handle reflowing, but it occurs to me that it wouldn't be hard to add. The big problem I always have with mhshow is that it seperates the headers from the body when displying it, but perhaps that could be easily cureable. --Ken ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
:-) So you are saying that if don't give a '-nostrict argument to the utility that checks for standard conformance the line length limit is 998 characters, but I give a -strict argument the line length limit will be 72 characters? As I read the man page for the utility the default is -nostrict. :-) Norman Shapiro 798 Barron Avenue Palo Alto CA 94306-3109 (650) 565-8215 n...@dad.org ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
:-) So you are saying that if don't give a '-nostrict argument to the utility that checks for standard conformance the line length limit is 998 characters, but I give a -strict argument the line length limit will be 72 characters? Well ... I hate things like -strict, because that is a term which is very subjective. As I read the man page for the utility the default is -nostrict. :-) Let's move to IETF termology and use -should and -must. I'm sure others will speak up, but MY understanding is the IETF default is -should -must. -Ken ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
Ken Hornstein k...@pobox.com writes: :-) So you are saying that if don't give a '-nostrict argument to the utility that checks for standard conformance the line length limit is 998 characters, but I give a -strict argument the line length limit will be 72 characters? Well ... I hate things like -strict, because that is a term which is very subjective. As I read the man page for the utility the default is -nostrict. :-) Let's move to IETF termology and use -should and -must. I'm sure others will speak up, but MY understanding is the IETF default is -should -must. Then perhaps -nomust is a synonym for -should and -noshould for -must? A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. So I guess my mind is little. Norman Shapiro 798 Barron Avenue Palo Alto CA 94306-3109 (650) 565-8215 n...@dad.org ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
Ralph Corderoy ra...@inputplus.co.uk writes: Hi Norm, That's disconcerting. For more than a decade now, the default for my editor was for no line wrapping. I inserted new lines to generate my own formatting. But some recipients complained that my Emails are jagged. This was caused by their Email client inserting its own line endings. Are you sure that's the cause? You inserted new lines how? With fmt(1) or similar, or manually? With my own Java program. If you're using a fixed-width font and they're reading it proportionally then two lines of 72 characters may look different lengths to them. Add on any variance because you're splitting lines and not fmt(1) or vim, e.g. gqap, and that may be jagged. So I gave up trying to control the format in which recipients see my Email. Just last week, I wrote the code to make line wrapping be the default whenever I'm editing a file in my drafts folder whose name is all digits. By that you mean each paragraph is one long line logically but the editor breaks it at a decent point, e.g. end of word, to make it easier to view? If so, you need to be careful of the 998 limit that Ken's pointed out; sendmail for one, IIRC, is an MTA that will break over-long lines, inserting a `!' at the end of each line that continued originally. So... do I conform to standards or make my my recipients unhappy? In passing I note that almost all the Email I get, not from nmh-workers@nongnu.org, has very long lines. I send text/plain with lines no longer than 72 and blank lines between paragraphs. That's what I had been doing for years. And I did get complaints. I've not had complaints of jaggedness but it certainly wouldn't adjust to fit the width of the recipient's window. The long-lined emails you're receiving may say in the MIME-headers that the text is to be `flowed', i.e. re-formatted to fit the viewer's display; I'm not sure which part of nmh can handle that, mhl through mhshow? Cheers, Ralph. Norman Shapiro ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 2:48 PM, norm wrote: I send text/plain with lines no longer than 72 and blank lines between paragraphs. That's what I had been doing for years. And I did get complaints. It is an exercise in futility to deal with MUAs that do not following the specifications. Text/plain should be rendered in fixed-width font and line breaks should be honored. Inferring paragraphs and reformatting should not be done. format=flowed was created to indicate when reformatting of text blocks could be done, but also stay friendly to non-flowed-aware MUAs. nmh is not friendly in generating format=flowed, you will have to do it in the editor you use. And even if you do, unsure if all MUAs support it, or the MUAs that regular folks use. The lack of following of standards even occurs at Google. GMail fails to format text/plain in a fixed-font. Pain in the ass when dealing with code snippets and other text where fixed-width is essential. For GMail, I have domain-specific CSS settings for Firefox so mail messages are rendered in a fixed-font (and to hide ads). --ewh P.S. I had a contract where I was required to use Outhouse...cough!... Outlook. At the time, I was able to dig around in the preferences and get Outlook to render text/plain correctly, and even doing quoting properly when I replied to an email. Therefore, the core problem may be with what the default settings of MUAs are. ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
Hi,
Earl wrote:
The lack of following of standards even occurs at Google. GMail fails
to format text/plain in a fixed-font.
Neither does it display Resent-{To,From,...} headers created by dist(1).
Nor have I found out how to `forw -mime' an email from it.
Cheers, Ralph.
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Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
Let's move to IETF termology and use -should and -must. I'm sure others will speak up, but MY understanding is the IETF default is -should -must. Then perhaps -nomust is a synonym for -should and -noshould for -must? Well, if you want precise definitions, here's the official text: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119 Specifically: 1. MUST This word, or the terms REQUIRED or SHALL, mean that the definition is an absolute requirement of the specification. [...] 3. SHOULD This word, or the adjective RECOMMENDED, mean that there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a particular item, but the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different course. So, 998 columns is a MUST. =78 columns is a SHOULD. --Ken ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
Ah, I forgot Apple Mail got rid of format=flowed and now happily sends long lines. Sigh. Perhaps we could bundle a utility that could be invoked as the 'editor' at the whatnow? prompt that would reformat a simple text file into the syntax format=flowed requires? I.e. something along the lines of the venerable fmt(1). Sure. If we had it output mhbuild directives, that would be even better. From what I can tell, a mhbuild directive at the top of the text that looked like this: #text/plain; format=flowed would do the right thing. Assuming, of course, that the body was formatted correctly. This gets into a larger meta-topic ... how do we compose messages in the modern world in nmh? Back when it was all simple text it was easy, but now as we've seen the power of nmh to use your favorite text editor is a bit of a liability. Right now nmh just uses the contents of your draft as what to send out to the SMTP server, but as we've seen we need to be a bit smarter. The attach functionality is a good start, but I'm wondering what other people are thinking about in terms of improved message composition in nmh? How should we interact with a user's editor and any MIME formatting we need to do? Sigh. Nothing obvious pops out at me; I'm open to suggestions. --Ken ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
[Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
Ralph Corderoy ra...@inputplus.co.uk writes: Well, if this hypothetical utility existed it would have certainly flagged your message as violating the 78 column limit :-) That's disconcerting. For more than a decade now, the default for my editor was for no line wrapping. I inserted new lines to generate my own formatting. But some recipients complained that my Emails are jagged. This was caused by their Email client inserting its own line endings. So I gave up trying to control the format in which recipients see my Email. Just last week, I wrote the code to make line wrapping be the default whenever I'm editing a file in my drafts folder whose name is all digits. So... do I conform to standards or make my my recipients unhappy? In passing I note that almost all the Email I get, not from nmh-workers@nongnu.org, has very long lines. Norman Shapiro ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
Re: [Nmh-workers] 78 column limit
n...@dad.org writes: Ralph Corderoy ra...@inputplus.co.uk writes: It was Ken Hornstein who so wrote. Norman Shapiro 798 Barron Avenue Palo Alto CA 94306-3109 (650) 565-8215 n...@dad.org ___ Nmh-workers mailing list Nmh-workers@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
