Please-reply: thompson
What is the generally accepted message body format for
line length restrictions ? Is there a standard on this (ala RFC 822),
or is it by generally accepted convention ? I have been told by my
network support shop that 80 characters is the "unspoken"
standard [including CRLF] and that the RFC's dont mention it
anywhere. I have a platform that generally line-wraps without
using CRLF structure. When this mail is sent over the mail-relay
gateway, the message body is not reformatted. Thus, when other
platforms on our InterNet receive this mail, the receiving software
does not handle the message body very gracefully, if at all. It has
raised a lively internal debate whether the sending side or the
receiving side needs to have its software modified. We have
been using RFC 821 and RFC 822 in our organization as standards
to request conformance with SMTP as the common denominator
among dissimilar and proprietary systems. The issue of the message
body format itself, how it is created and how it is displayed remain
unresolved issues. Please respond. Thank you.
-- David Thompson