ietf-822
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Re: BOF: Format-Flowed and Non-Western Charsets

2002-03-20 15:48:04

At 2:23 PM -0800 3/20/02, Steve Dorner wrote:

If we didn't get many mailers to implement it before, changing it makes me afraid we'll get even fewer.

That's a risk, and an argument in favor of plan (A) [amending the spec to give advice on when to discard the space as well as the CRLF, subject to the characters on either side of the SP CRLF being 7-bit US-ASCII and the folding rules for the language/charset being displayed.

However, plan (B) [deprecating f=f in favor of f=x] is much simple to implement, and thus may be more likely to be supported over time.


  and I think the software that supports it will support a new f=x.

Some will, some won't. And others will implement f=x only. And those who want to use f={f,x} won't know what to send.

Any new or updated software should support f=x only, that's the point of deprecating f=f; to make life simple. Support f=x on sending and receiving. Support f=f on receiving is nice, but not required for software that doesn't already support it. Everyone knows what to send.