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[Gary W. Swearingen]

Parv <parv at pair.com> writes:

> Anybody still interested in this, should not miss ...
>
>   RFC 3676, The Text/Plain Format and DelSp Parameters, Feb 2004
>   ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3676.txt

Thanks for the tip.

It's a shame that people (e.g., MSFT and its supporters) can't all
abide by the traditional simple rules or that we can't all switch to a
new standard with (SOME) features of modern markup languages, but such
is life, and RFC 3676 seems like a good compromise which should cut
down on a lot of acrimony.

Let's all lobby our mail software developers to add support for 3676.

> ... which supersedes RFC 2646.  "What does that superseding
> actually translates to?", i do not know.

Like with all RFCs, there's only a hope that people will follow the
new ones, which often have features to deal with the fact that some
people won't, at least for a while. (E.g., see the last paragraph of
the RFC.)



BTW, does anybody understand why 3676 refers to 79-column screens?

   (In addition to conformance to [RFC-2822], there is a historical
   need that all lines, even when displayed by a non-flowed-aware
   program, will fit in a standard 79- or 80-column screen without
   having to be wrapped.  The limit is 78, not 79 or 80, because while
   79 or 80 fit on a line, the last column is often reserved for a
   line-wrap indicator.)

Anyone ever seen a 79-column screen width or know how common they are?
I've never heard of one.  (They obviously aren't talking about 80
minus one for a line-wrap indicator, but about 79 minus one.)