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On 22 Dec 2008, at 18:23, Steven Susbauer wrote: |
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> Stroller wrote: |
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>> ... Mailers should default to plain text |
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>> unless the user explicitly chooses otherwise. |
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>> ... |
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> Mailers should also default to useful column sizes, which seem to have |
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> failed in the case of your last message. |
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Keith Moore's [1] "Recipient-Friendly MIME generation" seems to |
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suggest otherwise [2]: |
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Use the format=flowed option for typed-in text. |
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The format=flowed option (RFC 2646) is an extension to text/plain |
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that allows the sending mail user agent to represent unbroken, |
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wrappable text differently from text which is intended to be |
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represented as-is (without wrapping). It is also designed to be |
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readable on legacy mail readers that don't support format=flowed. |
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One advantage of format=flowed is that "wrappable" text can be |
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wrapped to suit the width of the recipient's display or output |
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medium - whether it's a big screen or a little PDA. Another |
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advantage |
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of format=flowed is that it works better with quotations, especially |
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when those quotations must be wrapped. |
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I hesitated before posting this, fearing that I would get slapped for |
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promoting the use of MIME on mailing lists. However when I check it |
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appears that "virtually all human-written Internet e-mail and a fairly |
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large proportion of automated e-mail is transmitted via SMTP in MIME |
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format. Internet e-mail is so closely associated with the SMTP and |
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MIME standards that it is sometimes called SMTP/MIME e-mail." [3] |
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Sections 4.1 & 4.2 of RFC 3676 [4], superseding RFC 2646 deal with the |
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MIME "Format" parameter and its value "flowed". I assume the IETF to |
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be authoritative on this, but please feel free to educate me. |
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Stroller. |
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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Moore |
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[2] http://www.cs.utk.edu/~moore/opinions/mime-style.html |
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[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME |
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[4] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3676.txt |
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