Excerpts from mail: 25-Aug-93 Re: MTAs and Content-Transf.. John
Noerenberg(_at_)qualcomm (1401*)
Most of the time most people are happy with this approach. But experience
tells me that line breaks really aren't up to the UA -- that they shouldn't
be up to the UA, but instead should be at the discretion of the user. This
is really a discussion of what should be done in the limit. The question
isn't "at what column should the UA force the line break?". Rather it is
"how can a UA help Sender A send a message which doesn't look stupid when
read by Recipient B?". Any rule which presupposes either the sender or
receiver's environment will be wrong under some circumstances, even if
right almost all of the time.
It's the times when it is wrong that users get frustrated at the limits
imposed by the UA -- and then the next message is hate mail to the UA's
author :-).
Yes, actually I think that there's no really right answer here. The
whole notion of line breaks is such a paper-oriented anachronism,
carried over into CRT's that acted like infininte pieces of paper. I'd
be very surprised to hear that there's any policy that will satisfy
everyone all the time. -- NB