Stephan Wehner wrote:
Section 3.4. Address Specification of RFC2822 specifies
name-addr = [display-name] angle-addr
What are the length limits on the display-name field? I take it a long
display-name
value would simply be folded as described under 2.2.3. Long Header Fields
Are there practical length limits with respect to current SMTP clients
and servers?
Stephen,
The display name is not used in SMTP. Only the actual address is used
at the SMTP level.
However, in the message 5322 headers itself, the MUA, mail readers,
display systems, etc, will use the display name extracted from
5322.From and 5322.To
The only practical limit I can think of is:
old days: 80 character limit or 72 to limit single line console display:
12345......................80
From: display-name
For the new days with gui, I guess that would be dependent on the GUI
mail reader and how it is displayed and also limits it as well. We are
still constrained with some practical limit for display a pretty
message header frame even with GUI. GUI affords you doubling up one or
more fields on a single row.
From: Date:
To:
Subject
But some software will truncate and triple dot it so it fits.
From: This User has a long Displ.... Date: xx/xx/xxxx xx:xxpm
For our backend software, we still display names to 72 characters
since it carried on from the old days and also, before email, most of
the time a display name was the login name, and 72 characters was
sufficient for any person's name. :)
Also, think the growing Mobil market. There for sure you have design
rendering limits, but that should relaxed with the growing tablet
market with larger screens.
Hope this helps.
--
Hector, Engineering & Technical Support
Santronics Software, Inc.
http://www.santronics.com (sales)
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